
Class jUlJl _ 

Book 'VZlL^ 



LECTURES 



THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, 
AND THE GOOD. 

BY M. W V C0US1N. 



INCREASED BY 



&n ®ppttftix on JFxmtf) &rt 



TRANSLATED, WITH THE APPROBATION OF M. COUSIN, BY 



0. W. WIGHT, 



TRANSLATOR OF COUSIN'S " COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY/ 

AMERICAN EDITOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., 

AUTHOR OF " THE ROMANCE OF ABELARD AND HELOISE/' ETC., ETC. 



God is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body." 

The Platonists andthe Fathers. 



THIRD EDITION. 



EDINBURGH: - - 

T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 

LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. DUBLIN: HODGES AND SMITH, 
AND JOHN ROBERTSON. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND CO. 



MDCCCLIY. 






" Did the Almighty, holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left 
Search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one I might prefer ; — in all 
humility, but without hesitation, I should request Search after Truth." 



L.ESSI.NG. 



EDINBURGH: I'RINTED BY ANDREW JACK., CLYDE STREET. 



TO 

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., 

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH: 

WHO HAS CLEARLY ELUCIDATED, AND, WITH GREAT ERUDITION, 

SKETCHED THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF 

COMMON sense; 

WHO, FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS 

COUNTRYMAN, REID, 

HAS ESTABLISHED THE DOCTRINE OF THE 

IMMEDIATENESS OF PERCEPTION, 

THEREBY FORTIFYING PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE ASSAULTS OF SCEPTICISM; 

WHO, TAKING A STEP IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTHERS, 

HAS GIVEN TO THE WORLD A DOCTRINE OF THE 

CONDITIONED, 

THE ORIGINALITY AND IMPORTANCE OF WHICH ARE ACKNOWLEDGED 

BY THE FEW QUALIFIED TO JUDGE IN SUCH MATTERS; 

WHOSE 

NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS 

COMPLETES THE HITHERTO UNFINISHED WORKS OF ARISTOTLE; 

THIS TEANSLATION OF M. COUSIN'S 

Itrtas mt % €m, % 38wratiful, mrft tjp toft, 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 

IB ADMIRATION OF A PROFOUND AND INDEPENDENT THINKER, 

OF AN INCOMPARABLE MASTER OF PHILOSOPHIC CRITICISM; 

AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR A MAN, IN WHOM GENIUS 

AND ALMOST UNEQUALLED LEARNING 

HAVE BEEN ADORNED BY 

TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS OF LIFE. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE, 



Fob some time past we have been asked, on various 
sides, to collect in a body of doctrine the theories scat- 
tered in our different works, and to sum up, in just pro- 
portions, what men are pleased to call our philosophy. 

This resume was wholly made. We had only to take 
again the lectures already quite old, but little known, be- 
cause they belonged to a time when the courses of the 
Faculte des Lettres had scarcely any influence beyond the 
Quartier Latin, and, also, because they could be found 
only in a considerable collection, comprising all our first 
instruction, from 1 8 1 5 to 1 821 ? These lectures were there, 
as it were, lost in the crowd. We have drawn them hence, 
and give them a part, severely corrected, in the hope that 

1 1st Series of our work, Cours de VHidoire de la Philosophie Modern? , 
five volumes. 



X AUTHOR S PREFACE. 

virtue, the dignity of justice, the beauty of charity; and 
beyond the limits of this world it shows a God, author 
and type of humanity, who, after having evidently made 
man for an excellent end, will not abandon him in the 
mysterious development of his destiny. This philosophy 
is the natural ally of all good causes. It sustains religious 
sentiment; it seconds true art, poesy worthy of the name, 
and a great literature ; it is the support of right ; it equally 
repels the craft of the demagogue and tyranny; it teaches 
all men to respect and value themselves, and, little by 
little, it conducts human societies to the true republic, that 
dream of all generous souls which in our times can be 
realized in Europe only by constitutional monarchy. 

To aid, with all our power, in setting up, defending, 
and propagating this noble philosophy, — such is the object 
that early inspired us, that has sustained during a career 
already lengthy, in which difficulties have not been want- 
ing. Thank God, time has rather strengthened than 
weakened our convictions, and we end as we began: this 
new edition of one of our first works is a last effort in 
favour of the holy cause for which we have combatted 
nearly forty years. 

May our voice be heard by new generations as it was 
by the serious youth of the Restoration ! Yes, it is parti- 



AUTHOR S PREFACE. XI 

cularly to you that we address this work, young men 
whom we no longer know, but whom we bear in our 
heart, because you are the seed and the hope of the future. 
We have shown you the principle of our evils and their 
remedy. If you love liberty and your country, shun 
what has destroyed them. Far from you be that sad 
philosophy which preaches to you materialism and atheism 
as new doctrines destined to regenerate the world: they 
kill, it is true, but they do not regenerate. Do not listen 
to those superficial spirits who give themselves out as pro- 
found thinkers, because after Voltaire they have discovered 
difficulties in Christianity: measure your progress in 
philosophy by your progress in tender veneration for the 
religion of the Grospel. Be well persuaded that, in France, 
democracy will always traverse liberty, that it brings all 
right into disorder, and through disorder into dictatorship. 
Ask, then, only a moderated liberty, and attach your- 
selves to that with all the powers of your soul. Do not 
bend the knee to fortune, but accustom yourselves to bow 
to law. Entertain the noble sentiment of respect. Know 
how to admire, — possess the worship of great men and 
great things. Reject that enervating literature, by turns 
gross and refined, which delights in painting the miseries 
of human nature, which caresses all our weaknesses, 



X!l AUTHOR S PREFACE. 

which pays court to the senses and the imagination, 
instead of speaking to the soul and awakening thought. 
Guard yourselves against the malady of our century, that 
fatal taste of an accommodating life, incompatible with 
all generous ambition. Whatever career you embrace, 
propose to yourselves an elevated aim, and put in its ser- 
vice an unalterable constancy. Sursum corda, value 
highly your heart, wherein is seen all philosophy, that 
which we have retained from all our studies, which we 
have taught to your predecessors, which we leave to you 
as our last word, our final lecture. 

V. COUSIN. 

June 15, 1853. 



A too indulgent public having promptly rendered neces- 
sary a new edition of this book, we are forced to render 
it less unworthy of the suffrages which it has obtained, 
by reviewing it with severe attention, by introducing a 
mass of corrections in detail, and a considerable number 
of additions, among which the only ones that need be in- 
dicated here are some pages on Christianity at the end of 



AUTHOR S PREFACE. Xlll 

Lecture XVI., and the notes placed as an Appendix 1 at 
the end of the volume, on various works of French masters 
which we have quite recently seen in England, which 
have confirmed and increased our old admiration for our 
national art of the seventeenth century. 

November 1, 1353. 

1 The Appendix has been translated by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, 
of the British Museum, who is alone entitled to credit and alone respon- 
sible.— Tr. 



TBANSLATOB'S PBEFACE 



The nature of this publication is sufficiently explained 
in the preface of M. Cousin. 

We have attempted to render his book, without 
comment, faithfully into English. Not only have we 
endeavoured to give his thought without increase or 
diminution, but have also tried to preserve the main 
characteristics of his style. On the one hand, we 
have carefully shunned idioms peculiar to the French; 
on the other, when permitted by the laws of structure 
common to both languages, we have followed the gene- 
ral order of sentences, even the succession of words. 
It has been our aim to make this work wholly Cousin's 
in substance, and in form as nearly his as possible, 
with a total change of dress. That, however, we may 
have nowhere missed a shade of meaning, nowhere 
introduced a gallicism, is too much to be hoped for, 
too much to be demanded. 

M. Cousin, in his Philosophical Discussions, defines 
the terms that he uses. In the translation of these we 
have maintained uniformity, so that in this regard no 
farther explanation is necessary. 



XVI TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 

This is, perhaps, in a philosophical point of view, 
the most important of all M. Cousin's works, for it 
contains a complete summary and lucid exposition of 
the various parts of his system. It is now the last 
word of European philosophy, and merits serious and 
thoughtful attention. 

This and many more like it, are needed in these 
times, when noisy and pretentious demagogues are 
speaking of metaphysics with idiotic laughter, when 
utilitarian statesmen are sneering at philosophy, when 
undisciplined sectarians of every kind are decrying it; 
when, too, earnest men, in state and church, men on 
whose shoulders the social world really rests, are invoking 
philosophy, not only as the best instrument of the highest 
culture and the severest mental discipline, but also as 
the best human means of guiding politics towards the 
eternally true and the eternally just, of preserving 
theology from the aberrations of a zeal without know- 
ledge, and from the perversion of the interested and 
the cunning; when many an artist, who feels the nobility 
of his calling, who would address the mind of man rather 
than his senses, is asking a generous philosophy to 
explain to him that ravishing and torturing Ideal which 
is ever eluding his grasp, which often discourages unless 
understood; when, above all, devout and tender souls 
are learning to prize philosophy, since, in harmony with 
Revelation, it strengthens their belief in God, freedom, 
immortality 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XVU 

Grateful to an indulgent public, on both sides of the 
ocean, for a kindly and very favourable reception of our 
version of M. Cousin's " Course of the History of Modern 
Philosophy," we add this translation of his " Lectures 
on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good/' hoping that 
his explanation of human nature will aid some in solving 
the grave problem of life, — for there are always those, 
and the most gifted, too, who feel the need of under- 
standing themselves, — believing that his eloquence, his 
elevated sentiment, and elevated thought, will afford 
gratification to a refined taste, a chaste imagination, 
and a disciplined mind. 

0. W. WIGHT. 

Lo>-dox, Dec. 21, 1853. 



ADVEETISEMENT. 



The Publishers have to express their thanks to M. Cousin 
for his cordial concurrence, and especially for his kindness in trans- 
mitting the sheets of the French original as printed, so that this 
translation appears almost simultaneously with it. 

Edinburgh, 38 George Street, 
Dec. 26, 1853. 



CONTENTS. 



Author's Preface Page vii 

Translator's Preface xv 

Discourse Pronounced at the Opening of the Course. — Philo- 

sophf of the nineteenth century 17 

Spirit and general principles of the Course. — Object of the Lectures of this 
year: — application of the principles of which an exposition is given, to 
the three Problems of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. 

PART FIEST.— THE TRUE. 

Lecture I. —The Existence of Universal and Necessary 

Principles 25 

Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute truths that 
may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the 
philosophy of our time. — Universal and necessary principles. — Examples 
of different kinds of such principles. — Distinction between universal and 
necessary principles and general principles. — Experience alone is inca- 
pable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable 
of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible 
world. — Reason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these 
principles. - -The study of universal and necessary principles introduces 
us to the highest parts of philosophy. 

Lecture II. — Origin of L"niyersal and Necessary Principles . 47 

Remme of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of 
universal and necessary principles. — Danger of this question, and its ne- 
cessity. — Different forms under which truth presents itself to us, and 
the successive order of these forms: theory of spontaneity and reflection. 
— The primitive form of principles; abstraction that disengages them 
from that form, and gives them their actual form. — Examination and 
refutation of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles 
by an induction founded on particular notions. 



xx contents. 

Lecture III. —On the Value of Universal and Necessary Prin- 
ciples p age 6 4 

Examination and refutation of Kant's scepticism. — Recurrence to the theory 
of spontaneity and reflection. 

Lecture IV. — God the Principle of Principles 76 

Object of the lecture : "What is the ultimate basis of absolute truth ? — 
Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular 
beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute 
truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in 
absolute truth, but do not explain it ; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth 
does not exist in itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God. — 
Plato; St. Augvistine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fenelon; Bossuet; 
Leibnitz. — Truth the mediator between God and man. — Essential dis- 
tinctions. 

Lecture V. — On Mysticism 109 

Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Mysti- 
cism consists in pretending to know God without an intermediary. — 
Two sorts of mysticism. — Mysticism of sentiment. Theory of sensi- 
bility. Two sensibilities — the one external, the other internal, and 
corresponding to the soul as external sensibility corresponds to nature. — 
Legitimate part of sentiment. — Its aberrations. — Philosophical mysticism. 
Plotinus : God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary 
by pure thought. — Ecstasy. — Mixture of superstition and abstraction in 
mysticism. — Conclusion of the first part of the course. 



PART SECOND.— THE BEAUTIFUL. 

Lecture VI. — The Beautiful in the Mind of Man . . . .133 

The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art is, as in 
the investigation of the true, to commence by psychology. Faculties of 
the soul that unite in the perception of the beautiful. — The senses give 
only the agreeable ; reason alone gives the idea of the beautiful. — Refu- 
tation of empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful. — 
Pre-eminence of reason. — Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sen- 
sation and desire. — Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful 
and that of the sublime. — Imagination. — Influence of sentiment on 
imagination. — Influence of imagination on sentiment. —Theory of taste. 

Lecture VII. — The Beautiful in Objects 154 

Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful : the beauti' 
ful cannot be reduced to what is useful. — Nor to convenience. — Nor to 
proportion. — Essential characters of the beautiful. — Different kinds of 



CONTENTS. XXI 

beauties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intel- 
lectual beauty. Moral beauty. — Ideal beauty : it is especially moral 
beauty. — God, the first principle of the beautiful. — Theor- of Plato. 

Lecture VIII. — On Art Page 170 

Genius : — its attribute is creative power. — Refutation of the opinion that 
art is the imitation of nature. — M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremere 
de Quincy. — Refutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art 
has not solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity. — 
Nor even directly the moral and religious sentiment. — The proper and 
direct object of art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the 
beautiful ; this idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by 
the affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation of 
ideal beauty to its principle, which is God. — True mission of art. 

Lecture TX. — The Different Arts 184 

Expression is the general law of art. — Division of arts. — Distinction be- 
tween liberal arts and trades. — Eloquence itself, philosophy, and history 
do not make a part of the fine arts. — That the arts gain nothing by 
encroaching upon each other, and usurping each other's means and pro- 
cesses. — Classification of the arts : — its true principle is expression. — 
Comparison of arts with each other. — Poetry the first of arts. 

Lecture X. — French Art in the Seventeenth Century . . . 200 

Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but the diffe- 
rent schools of art. Example : — French art in the seventeenth century. 
French poetry : — Corneille. Racine. Moliere. La Fontaine. Boileau. — 
Painting : — Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain. Champagne. — Engraving. — 
Sculpture : — Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet. — Le Notre. — 
Architecture. 



PART THIRD.— THE GOOD. 
Lecture XI. — Primary Notions of Common Sense 245 

Extent of the question of the good. — Position of the question according to 
the psychological method : What is, in regard to the good, the naturnl 
belief of mankind? — The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought 
in a pretended state of nature. — Study of the sentiments and ideas of 
men in languages, in life, in consciousness. — Disinterestedness and devo- 
tedness. — Liberty. — Esteem and contempt. — Respect. — Admiration and 
indignation. — Dignity. — Empire of opinion. — Ridicule. — Regret and 
Repentance. — Natural and necessary foundations of all justice. — Dis- 
tinction between fact and right. —Common sense, true and false philo- 
sophy. 



XX11 CONTENTS. 

Lecture XII.— The Ethics of Interest Page 262 

Exposition of the doctrine of interest. — What there is of truth in this doc- 
trine. — Its defects. 1st, It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby 
abolishes liberty. 2ud, It cannot explain the fundamental distinction 
between good and evil. 3rd, It cannot explain obligation and duty. 
4th, Nor right. 5th, Nor the principle of merit and demerit. — Conse- 
quences of the ethics of interest: that they cannot admit a providence, 
and lead to despotism. 

Lecture XIII. — Other Defective Principles 293 

The ethics of sentiment. —The ethics founded on the principle of the 
interest of the greatest number. — The ethics founded on the will of 
God alone. — The ethics founded on the punishments and rewards of 
another life. 

Lecture XIV. — True Principles of Ethics .... T .. 316 
Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena. — 
Analysis of each of these facts : — 1st, Judgment and idea of the good. 
That this judgment is absolute. Relation between the true and the 
good — 2nd, Obligation. Refutation of the doctrine of Kant that 
draws the idea of the good from obligation instead of founding obliga- 
tion on the idea of the good. — 3rd, Liberty, and the moral notions at- 
tached to the notion of liberty. — 4th, Principle of merit and demerit. 
Punishments and rewards. — 5th, Moral sentiments. — Harmony of all 
these facts in nature and science. 

Lecture XV. — Private and Public Ethics 348 

Application of the preceding principles. — General formula of interest, — to 
obey reason. — Rule for judging whether an action is or is not conforme 
to reason,— to elevate the motive of this action into a maxim of univer- 
sal legislation. — Individual ethics. It is not towards the individual, 
but towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all in- 
dividual duties, — to respect and develop the moral person. — Social ethics, 
— duties of justice and duties of charity. — Civil society. Government. 
Law. The right to punish. 

Lecture XVI. — God the Principle of the Idea of the Good . . 376 

Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of moral 
truth, of the good, and of the moral person. — Liberty of God. — The 
divine justice and charity. — God, the sanction of the moral law. Im • 
mortality of the soul; argument from merit and demerit; argument 
from the simplicity of the soul ; argument from final causes. — Religious 
sentiment. — Adoration. — Worship. — Moral beauty of Christianity. 



CONTENTS. IX1I1 

Lecture XVII. — Resume of Doctrine Page 401 

Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three orders of 
facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation of each one of them 
to the modern school that has recognised and developed it, but almost 
always exaggerated it. — Experience and empiricism. — Reason and ideal- 
ism. — Sentiment and mysticism. — Theodicea Defects of different known 
systems. — The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the character 
of certainty and reality that this process gives to it. 

APPENDIX, 429 



LECTURES 



TRUE. THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 



DTSCOUESE 

PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE, 

December 4, 1817. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Spirit and general principles of the Course. — Object of the Lectures of this 
year: — application of the principles of which an exposition is given, to 
the three Problems of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. 

It seems natural that a century, in its beginning, should 
borrow its philosophy from the century that preceded it. 
But, as free and intelligent beings, we are not born merely 
to continue our predecessors, but to increase their work, 
and also to do our own. "We cannot accept from them an 
inheritance except under the condition of improving it. 
Our first duty is, then, to render to ourselves an account 
of the philosophy of the eighteenth century ; to recognise 
its character and its principles, the problems which it 
agitated, and the solutions which it gave of them ; to dis- 
cern, in fine, what it transmits to us of the true and the 



18 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

productive, and what it also leaves of the sterile and the 
false, in order that, with reflective choice, we may 
embrace the former and reject the latter. 1 Placed at the 
entrance of the new times, let us know, first of all, with 
what views we would occupy ourselves. Moreover, why 
should I not say it ? After two years of instruction, in 
which the professor, in some sort, has been investigating 
himself, one has a right to demand of him what he is; 
what are his most general principles on all the essential 
parts of philosophic science; what flag, in fine, in the 
midst of parties which contend with each other so 
violently, he proposes for you, young men, who frequent 
this auditory, and who are called upon to participate in 
a destiny still so uncertain and so obscure in the nine- 
teenth century, to follow. 

It is not patriotism, it is a profound sentiment of truth 
and justice, which makes us place the whole philosophy 
now expanded in the world under the invocation of the 
name of Descartes. Yes, the whole of modern philosophy 
is the work of this great man, for it owes to him the spirit 
that animates it, and the method that constitutes its power. 

After the downfall of scholasticism and the mournful 
disruptures of the sixteenth century, the first object 
which the bold good sense of Descartes proposed to itself 
was to make philosophy a human science, like astronomy, 
physiology, medicine, subject to the same uncertainties 

1 We have so much felt the necessity of understanding well the philo- 
sophy of the century that ours succeeds, that three times we have under- 
taken the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, here first, in 
1818, then in 1819 and 1820, and that is the subject of the last three 
volumes of the 1st Series of our works; finally, we resumed it in 1829, 
vol. ii. and iii. of the 2nd Series. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 19 

and to the same aberrations, but capable also of the same 
progress. 

Descartes encountered the scepticism spread on every 
side in the train of so many revolutions, ambitious hypo- 
theses, born out of the first use of an ill-regulated liberty, 
and the old formulas surviving the ruins of scholasticism. 
In his courageous passion for truth, he resolved to reject, 
provisorily at least, all the ideas that hitherto he had 
received without controlling them, firmly decided not to 
admit any but those which, after a serious examination, 
might appear to him evident. But he perceived that 
there was one thing which he could not reject, even pro- 
visorily, in his universal doubt, — that thing was the exis- 
tence itself of his doubt, that is to say, of his thought ; 
for although all the rest might be only an illusion, this 
fact, that he thought, could not be an illusion. Descartes, 
therefore, stopped at this fact, of an irresistible evidence, 
as at the first truth which he could accept without fear. 
Recognising at the same time that thought is the necessary 
instrument of all the investigations which he might pro 
pose to himself, as well as the instrument of the human 
race in the acquisition of its natural knowledges, 1 he de- 
voted himself to a regular study of it, to the analysis of 
thought as the condition of all legitimate philosophy, and 
upon this solid foundation he reared a doctrine of a cha- 
racter at once certain and living, capable of resisting 
scepticism, exempt from hypotheses, and affranchised 
from the formulas of the schools. 

Thus the analysis of thought, and of the mind which is 
the subject of it, that is to say, psychology, has become 

1 This word was used by the old English writers, and there ia no reason 
why it should not be retained. 



•20 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

the point of departure, the most general principle, the 
important method of modern philosophy. 1 

Nevertheless, it must indeed be owned, philosophy has 
not entirely lost, and sometimes still retains, since Des- 
cartes and in Descartes himself, its old habits. It rarely 
belongs to the same man to open and run a career, and 
usually the inventor succumbs under the weight of his 
own invention. So Descartes, after having so well placed 
the point of departure for all philosophical investigation, 
more than once forgets analysis and returns, at least in 
form, to the ancient philosophy. 2 The true method, 
again, is more than once effaced in the hands of his first 
successors, under the always increasing influence of the 
mathematical method. 

Two periods may be distinguished in the Cartesian era, 
— one in which the method, in its newness, is often 
misconceived; the other, in which one is forced, at least, 
to re-enter the salutary way opened by Descartes. To 
the first belong Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz himself; 
to the second, the philosophers of the eighteenth century. 

Without doubt Malebranche, upon some points, de- 
scended very far into interior investigation ; but most of 
the time he gave himself up to wander in an imaginary 
world, and lost sight of the real world. It is not a 

1 On the method of Descartes, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 20; 2nd 
aeries, vol. i., lecture 2; vol. ii., lecture 11; 3rd Series, vol. Hi., Philo- 
sophic Moderne, as well as Fragments de Philosophie CarUsienne; 5th Series, 
Instruction Pvbliqxie, vol. ii., Defense de VUniversite et de la Philosophie, 
p. 112, etc. 

8 On this return to the scholastic form in Descartes, see 1st Series, 
vol. iv., lecture 12, especially three articles of the Joxwnal des Sarants, 
August,' September, and October, 1850, in which we have examined anew 
the principles of Cartesianism, ct propos the Leibnitii Animadversiones ad 
Carteeii Pnnci/'ia Philosophic. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 21 

method that is wanting to Spinoza, but a good method; 
his error consists in having applied to philosophy the 
geometrical method, which proceeds by axioms, defini- 
tions, theorems, corollaries ; no one has made less ^use of 
the psychological method; that is the principle and the 
condemnation of his system. The Nouveaux Essais sur 
VEntendement Humain exhibit Leibnitz opposing observa- 
tion to observation, analysis to analysis; but his genius 
usually hovers over science, instead of advancing in it step 
by step ; hence the results at which he arrives are often 
only brilliant hypotheses, for example, the pre-established 
harmony, now relegated among the analogous hypotheses 
of occasional causes and a plastic mediator. In general, 
the philosophy of the seventeenth century, by not em- 
ploying with sufficient rigour and firmness the method 
with which Descartes had armed it, produced little else 
than systems, ingenious without doubt, bold and profound, 
but often also rash, — systems that have failed to keep their 
place in science. 1 In fact, nothing is durable except that 
which is founded upon a sound method; time destroys all 
the rest ; time, which re-collects, fecundates, aggrandizes 
the least germs of truth deposited in the humblest analyses, 
strikes without pity, engulphs hypotheses, even those of 
genius. Time takes a step, and arbitrary systems are over- 
turned; the statues of their authors alone remain standing 
over their ruins. The task of the friend of truth is to 
search for the useful remains of them, that survive and 
can serve for new and more solid constructions. 

The philosophy of the eighteenth century opens the 

1 See on Malebranche Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2nd Series, vol. ii., 
lectures 11 and 12; 3rd Series, vol. iv., Introduction aux GEuvres Philoso- 
phiqua dt M. deBiran, p. 288; and the Fray Meats de Philowphie CartLtcnae, 
passim. 



22 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

second period of the Cartesian era; it proposed to itself to 
apply the method already discovered and too much 
neglected, — it applied itself to the analysis of thought. 
Disabused of ambitious and sterile attempts, and, like 
Descartes, disdainful of the past, the eighteenth century 
dared to think that everything in philosophy was to be 
done over again, and that, in order not to wander anew, 
it was necessary to set out with the modest study of man. 
Instead, therefore, of building up all at once systems 
risked upon the universality of things, it undertook to 
examine what man knows, what he can know; it brought 
back entire philosophy to the study of our faculties, as 
physics had just been brought back to the study of the 
properties of bodies, — which was giving to philosophy, if 
not its end, at least its true beginning. 

The great schools which divide the eighteenth century 
are the English and French school, the Scotch school, and 
the German school, that is to say, the school of Locke 
and Condillac, that of Reid, that of Kant. It is impossible 
to misconceive the common principle which animates 
them, the unity of their method. When one examines 
with impartiality the method of Locke, he sees that it 
consists in the analysis of thought; and it is thereby that 
Locke is a disciple, not of Bacon and Hobbes, but of our 
great countryman, Descartes. 1 To study the human under- 
standing as it is in each one of us, to recognise its powers, 
and also its limits, is the problem which the English 
philosopher proposed to himself, and which he attempted to 
solve. I do not wish to judge here of the solution which 
he gave of this problem; I limit myself to indicating clearly 

1 On Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, especially 2nd Series, 
vol. iii., Exanien du Systdme de Locke. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 23 

what was for him the fundamental problem. Condillac, the 
French disciple of Locke, made himself everywhere the 
apostle of analysis; and analysis was also in him, or at 
least should have been, the study of thought. No philo- 
sopher, not even Spinoza, has wandered farther than Con- 
dillac 1 from the true experimental method, and has straj'ed 
farther on the route of abstractions, even verbal abstrac- 
tions; but, strange enough, no one is severer than he 
against hypotheses, save that of the statue- man. The 
author of the Traite des Sensations has very unfaith- 
fully practised analysis; but he speaks of it without ces- 
sation. The Scotch school combats Locke and Condillac; 
it combats them, but with their own arms, with the same 
method which it pretends to apply better. 2 In Germany, 
Kant wishes to replace in light and honour the superior 
element of human consciousness, left in the shade, and de- 
cried by the philosophy of his times; and for that end, what 
does he do? He undertakes a profound examination of 
the faculty of knowing; the title of his principal work is, 
Critique of Pure Reason; 3 it is a critique, that is to say 
again, an analysis ; the method of Kant is then no other 
than that of Locke and Reid. Follow it until it reaches 
the hands of Fichte, 4 the successor of Kant, who died but 
a few years since; there, again, the analysis of thought 
is given as the foundation of philosophy. Kant was so 
firmly established in the subject of knowledge, that he 
could scarcely go out of it — that, in fact, he never did 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3. 

2 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School. 

3 See on Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, vol. v. of the 1st 
Series, where that great work is examined with as much extent as that of 
Reid in vol. iv., and the Essay of Locke in vol. iii. of the 2nd Series. 

4 On Fichte, 2nd Series, vol. i., lecture 12 ; 3rd Series, vol. iv., Intro- 
duction aux CEvvrcs de M. de Biran, p. 324. 



24 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

legitimately go out of it. Fichte plunged into the subject 
of knowledge so deeply that he buried himself in it, and 
absorbed in the human me all existences, as well as all 
sciences — sad shipwreck of analysis, which signalizes at 
once its greatest effort and its rock ! 

The same spirit, therefore, governs all the schools of 
the eighteenth century; this century disdains arbitrary 
formulas; it has a horror for hypotheses, and attaches 
itself, or pretends to attach itself, to the observation of 
facts, and particularly to the analysis of thought. 

Let us acknowledge with freedom and with grief, that 
the eighteenth century applied analysis to all things with- 
out pity and without measure. It cited before its tribunal 
all doctrines, all sciences; neither the metaphysics of the 
preceding age, with their imposing systems, nor the arts 
with their prestige, nor the governments with their ancient 
authority, nor the religions with their majesty, — nothing 
found favour before it. Although it spied abysses at 
the bottom of what it called philosophy, it threw itself 
into them with a courage which is not without grandeur; 
for the grandeur of man is to prefer what he believes to 
be truth to himself. The eighteenth century let loose 
tempests. Humanity no more progressed, except over 
ruins. The world was again agitated in that state of 
disorder in which it had already been once seen, at the 
decline of the ancient beliefs, and before the triumphs 
of Christianity, when men wandered through all contra- 
ries, without power to rest anywhere, given up to every 
disquietude of spirit, to every misery of heart, fanatical 
and atheistical, mystical and incredulous, voluptuous and 
sanguinary. 1 But if the philosophy of the eighteenth cen- 

1 We expressed ourselves thus in December, 181 7, when, following the 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 2o 

tury lias left us a vacuity for an inheritance, it has also left 
us an energetic and fecund love of truth. The eighteenth 
century was the age of criticism and destructions; the 
nineteenth should be that of intelligent rehabilitations. 
It belongs to it to find in a profounder analysis of thought 
the principles of the future, and with so many remains to 
raise, in fine, an edifice that reason may be able to ac- 
knowledge. 

A feeble but zealous workman, I come to bring my 
stone; I come to do my work; I come to extract from the 
midst of the ruins what has not perished, what cannot 
perish. This course is at once a return to the past, an 
effort towards the future. I propose neither to attack 
nor to defend any of the three great schools that divide 
the eighteenth century. I will not attempt to perpetuate 
and envenom the warfare which divides them, compla- 
cently designating the differences which separate them, 
without taking an account of the community of method 
which unites them. I come, on the contrary, a devoted 
soldier of philosophy, a common friend of all the schools 
which it has produced, to offer to all the words of peace. 

The unity of modern philosophy, as we have said, re- 
sides in its method, that is to say, in the analysis of 
thought — a method superior to its own results, for it con- 
tains in itself the means of repairing the errors that escape 
it, of indefinitely adding new riches to riches already ac- 
quired. The physical sciences themselves have no other 
unity. The great physicans who have appeared within 
two centuries, although united amongst themselves by the 

great wars of the Revolution, and after the downfall of the empire, the con- 
stitutional monarchy, still poorly established, left the future of France and 
of the world obscure. It is sad to be obliged to hold the same language in 
1835, over the ruins accumulated around us. 



26 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

same point of departure and by the same end, generally- 
accepted, have nevertheless proceeded with independence 
and in ways often opposite. Time has re-collected in 
their different theories the part of truth that produced 
them and sustained them ; it has neglected their errors 
from which they were unable to extricate themselves, 
and uniting all the discoveries worthy of the name, it 
lias little by little formed of them a vast and harmoni- 
ous whole. Modern philosophy has also been enriched 
during the two centuries with a multitude of exact obser- 
vations, of solid and profound theories, for which it is 
indebted to the common method. What has hindered her 
from progressing at an equal pace with the physical 
sciences whose sister she is? She has been hindered by 
not understanding better her own interests, by not tolera- 
ting diversities that are inevitable, that are even useful, 
and by not profiting by the truths which all the particular 
doctrines contain, in order to deduce from them a general 
doctrine, which is successively and perpetually purified 
and aggrandized. 

Not, indeed, that I would recommend that blind syn- 
cretism which destroyed the school of Alexandria, which 
attempted to bring contrary systems together by force; 
what I recommend is an enlightened eclecticism which) 
judging with equity, and even with benevolence, all 
schools, borrows from them what they possess of the 
true, and neglects what in them is false. Since the 
spirit of party has hitherto succeeded so ill with us, let 
us try the spirit of conciliation. Human thought is 
immense. Each school has looked at it only from its own 
point of view. This point of view is not false, but it is in- 
complete, and moreover, it is exclusive. It expresses but 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 27 

one side of truth, and rejects all the others. The question 
is not to decry and re-commence the work of our prede- 
cessors, but to perfect it in re-uniting, and in fortifying 
by that re-union, all the truths scattered in the different 
systems which the eighteenth century has transmitted 
to us. 

Such is the principle to which we have been conducted 
by two years of study upon modern philosophy, from 
Descartes to our times. This principle, badly disengaged 
at first, we applied for the first time within the narrowest 
limits, and only to theories relative to the question of 
personal existence. 1 We then extended it to a greater 
number of questions and theories ; we touched the princi- 
pal points of the intellectual and moral order, 2 and at the 
same time that we were continuing the investigations of 
our illustrious predecessor, M. Royer-Collard, upon the 
schools of France, England, and Scotland, we commenced 
the study new among us, the difficult but interesting and 
fecund study, of the philosophy of Kcenigsberg. "We can 
at the present time, therefore, embrace all the schools of 
the eighteenth century, and all the problems which they 
agitated. 

Philosophy, in all times, turns upon the fundamental 
ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good. The idea 
of the true, philosophically developed, is psychology, 
logic, metaphysic; the idea of the good is private and 
public morals; the idea of the beautiful is that science 
which in Germany is called aesthetics, the details of which 
pertain to the criticism of literature, the criticism of arts, 
but whose general principles have always occupied a more 

1 1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816. 

2 Jfyid., Course of 1817. 



22o OPENING DISCOURSE. 

or less considerable place in the researches, and even in 
the teaching of philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to 
llutcheson and Kant. 

Upon these essential points which constitute the entire 
domain of philosophy, we will successively interrogate the 
principal schools of the eighteenth century. 

When we examine them all with attention, we can 
easily reduce them to two, — one of which, in the analysis 
of thought, the common subject of all their works, gives 
to sensation an excessive part; the other of which, in this 
same analysis, going to the opposite extreme, deduces 
consciousness almost wholly from a faculty different from 
that of sensation — reason. The first of these schools 
is the empirical school, of which the father, or rather the 
wisest representative, is Locke, and Condillac the extreme 
representative; the second is the spiritualistic or rationalis- 
tic school, as it is called, which reckons among its illustri- 
ous interpreters Reid, who is the most irreproachable, and 
Kant, who is the most systematic. Surely there is truth 
in these two schools, and truth is a good which must be 
taken wherever one finds it. We willingly admit, with 
the empirical school, that the senses have not been given 
us in vain; that this admirable organization which ele- 
vates us above all other animate beings, is a rich and 
varied instrument which it would be folly to neglect. We 
are convinced that the spectacle of the world is a perma- 
nent source of sound and sublime instruction. Upon this 
point neither Aristotle, nor Bacon, nor Locke, has in us 
an adversary, but a disciple. We acknowledge, or rather 
we proclaim, that, in the analysis of human knowledge, 
it is necessary to assign to the senses an important part. 
But when the empirical school pretends that all that 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 29 

passes beyond the reach of the senses is a chimera, then 
we abandon it, and go over to the opposite school. We 
profess to believe, for example, that, without an agreeable 
impression, never should we have conceived the beautiful, 
and that, notwithstanding, the beautiful is not merely the 
agreeable ; that, thank heaven, happiness is usually added 
to virtue, but that the idea itself of virtue is essentially dif- 
ferent from that of happiness. On this point we are open- 
ly of the opinion of Reid and Kant. We have also 
established, and will again establish, that the reason of 
man is in possession of principles which sensation precedes 
but does not explain, and which are directly suggested to 
us by the power of reason alone. We will follow Kant 
thus far, but not farther. Far from following him, we 
will combat him, when, after having victoriously defended 
the great principles of every kind against empiricism, he 
strikes them with sterility, in pretending that they have 
no value beyond the enclosure of the reason which pos- 
sesses them, condemning also to impotence that same 
reason which he has just elevated so high, and opening 
the way to a refined and learned scepticism which, after 
all, ends at the same abyss with ordinary scepticism. 

You perceive that we shall be by turns with Locke, 
with Reid, and with Kant, in that just and strong mea- 
sure which is called eclecticism. 

Eclecticism is in our eyes the true historical method, 
and it has for us all the importance of the history of phi- 
losophy; but there is something which we place above the 
history of philosophy, and, consequently, above eclecticism, 
— philosophy itself. 

The history of philosophy does not carry its own light 
with it, it is not its own end. How could eclecticism, 



30 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

which has no other field than history, be our only, our 
primary, object ? 

It is, doubtless, just, it is of the highest utility, to dis- 
criminate in each system what there is true in it from 
what there is false in it; first, in order to appreciate this 
system rightly; then, in order to render the false of no 
account, to disengage and re-collect the true, and thus to 
enrich and aggrandize philosophy by history. But you 
conceive that we must already know what truth is, in 
order to recognise it, and to distinguish it from the error 
with which it is mixed ; so that the criticism of systems 
almost demands a system, so that the history of philoso- 
phy is constrained to first borrow from philosophy the 
light which it must one day return to it with usury. 

In fine, the history of philosophy is only a branch, or 
rather an instrument, of philosophical science. Surely it 
is the interest which we feel for philosophy that alone 
attaches us to its history; it is the love of truth which 
makes us everywhere pursue its vestiges, and interrogate 
with a passionate curiosity those who before us have also 
loved and sought truth. 

Thus philosophy is at once the supreme object and the 
torch of the history of philosophy. By this double title it 
has a right to preside over our instruction. 

In regard to this, one word of explanation, I beg you. 

He who is speaking before you to-day is, it is true, 
officially charged only with the course of the history of 
philosophy ; in that is our task, and in that, once more, 
our guide shall be eclecticism. But, we confess, if philo- 

1 On the legitimate employment and the imperative conditions of eclec- 
ticism, see 3rd Series, Fragments* Philosophiques, vol. iv., preface of the 
first edition, p. 41, &c, especially the article entitled De la Philolophie en 
Bdy'iyice, pp. 228 and 229. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 31 

sophy has not the right to present itself here in some 
sort on the first plan; if it should appear only behind 
its history, it in reality holds dominion; and to it all 
our wishes, as well as all our efforts, are related. We 
hold, doubtless, in great esteem both Brucker and Tenne- 
mann, 1 so wise, so judicious; nevertheless our models, our 
veritable masters, always present to our thought, are, in 
antiquity, Plato and Socrates, among the moderns, Des- 
cartes, and, why should I hesitate to say it, among us, 
and in our times, the illustrious man who has been pleased 
to call us to this chair. M. Royer- Collard was also only a 
professor of the history of philosophy; but he rightly pre- 
tended to have an opinion in philosophy; he served a 
cause which he has transmitted to us, and we will serve 
it in our turn. 

This great cause is known to you ; it is that of a 
sound and generous philosophy, worthy of our century 
by the severity of its methods, and answering to the 
immortal wants of humanity, setting out modestly from 
psychology, from the humble study of the human mind, 
in order to elevate itself to the highest regions, and to 
traverse metaphysics, aesthetics, theodicea, morals, and 
politics. 

Our enterprise is not then simply to renew the histoiy of 
philosophy by eclecticism ; we also wish, we especially wish, 
and history well understood, thanks to eclecticism, will 
therein powerfully assist us, to deduce from the study of 
systems, their strifes, and even their ruins, a system 
which may be proof against criticism, and which can be 



1 We have translated his excellent Manual of the History of Philosophy. 
See the second edition, vol. ii., 8vo., 1839. 



o2 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

accepted by your reason, and also by your heart, noble 
you tli of the nineteenth century ! 

In order to fulfil this great object, which is our veri- 
table mission to you, we shall dare this year, for the first 
and for the last time, to go beyond the narrow limits 
which are imposed upon us. In the history of the philo- 
sophy of the eighteenth century, we have resolved to 
leave a little in the shade the history of philosophy, in 
order to make philosophy itself appear, and while exhibit- 
ing to you the distinctive traits of the principal doctrines 
of the last century, to expose to you the doctrine which 
seems to us adapted to the wants and to the spirit of our 
times, and still, to explain it to you briefly, but in its 
full extent, instead of dwelling upon some one of its parts, 
as hitherto we have done. With years we will correct, 
we will task ourselves to aggrandize and elevate our work. 
To-day we present it you very imperfect still, but estab- 
lished upon foundations which we believe solid, and already 
stamped with a character that will not change. 

You will here see, then, brought together in a short space, 
our principles, our processes, our results. "We ardently 
desire to recommend them to you, young men, who are 
the hope of science as well as of your country. May we 
at least be able, in the vast career which we have to run, 
to meet in you the same kindness which hitherto has sus- 
tained us. 



PAET FIRST. 



THE TRUE. 



LECTURE I. 

THE EXISTENCE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES. 

Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute truths that 
may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the 
philosophy of our time. — Universal and necessary principles. — Examples 
of different kinds of such principles. — Distinction between universal and 
necessary principles and general principles. — Experience alone is inca- 
pable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable 
of dispensing witb them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible 
world. — Reason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these 
principles. --The study of universal and necessary principles introduces 
us to the highest parts of philosophy. 

To-day, as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. 
The first, the most imperious, is that of fixed, immuta- 
ble principles, which depend upon neither times nor places 
nor circumstances, and on which the mind reposes with 
an unbounded confidence. In all investigations, as long- 
as we have seized only isolated, disconnected facts, as long- 
as we have not referred them to a general law, we possess 
the materials of science, but there is yet no science. Even 
physics commence only when universal truths appear, to 
which all the facts of the same order that observation 



34 LECTURE FIRST. 

discovers to us in nature may be referred. Plato has 
said, that there is no science of the transitory. 

This is our first need. But there is another, not less 
legitimate, the need of not being the dupe of chimerical 
principles, of barren abstractions, of combinations more or 
less ingenious, but artificial, the need of resting upon 
reality and life, the need of experience. The physical 
and natural sciences, whose regular and rapid conquests 
strike and dazzle the most ignorant, owe their progress to 
the experimental method. Hence the immense popularity 
of this method, which is carried to such an extent that 
one would not now condescend to lend the least attention to 
a science over which this method should not seem to preside. 

To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of 
the ideal of science to which man aspires, and to search 
for it and find it by the route of experience, — such is the 
problem of philosophy. 

Now we address ourselves to your recollections of the 
last two years : — have we not established, by the severest 
experimental method, by reflection applied to the study 
of the human mind, with the deliberation and the rigour 
which such demonstrations exact, — have we not esta- 
blished that there are in all men, without distinction, in 
the wise and the ignorant, ideas, notions, beliefs, prin- 
ciples which the most determined sceptic cannot in the 
slightest degree deny, by which he is unconsciously, and 
in spite of himself, governed both in his words and actions, 
and which, by a striking contrast with our other know- 
ledges, are marked with the at once marvellous and in- 
contestable character, that they are encountered in the 
most common experience, and that, at the same time, in- 
stead of being circumscribed within the limits of this 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 35 

experience, they surpass and govern it, universal in the 
midst of particular phenomena to which they are applied; 
necessary, although mingled with things contingent; to 
our eyes infinite and absolute, even while appearing 
within us in that relative and finite being wdiich we are? 
It is not an unpremeditated paradox that we present to 
you; we are only expressing here the result of numerous 
lectures. 1 

It was not difficult for us to show that there are univer- 
sal and necessary principles at the head of all sciences. 

It is very evident that there are no mathematics with- 
out axioms and definitions, that is to say, without abso- 
lute principles. 

What would logic become, those mathematics of thought, 
if you should take away from it a certain number of prin- 
ciples, which are a little barbarous, perhaps, in their scho- 
lastic form, but must be universal and necessary in order 
to preside over all reasoning and every demonstration? 

Are physics possible, if every phenomenon which begins 
to appear does not suppose a cause and a law? 

Without the principle of final causes, could physiology 
proceed a single step, render to itself an account of a 
single organ, or determine a single function? 

Is not the principle on which the whole of morals rests, 
the principle which obligates man to good and lays the 
foundation of virtue, of the same nature? Does it not 
extend to all moral beings, without distinction of time 
and place? Can you conceive of a moral being who 
does not recognise in the depth of his conscience that 
reason ought to govern passion, that it is necessary to 
preserve sworn faith, and, against the most pressing inte- 

lst Series of our Course, vol. i. 



36 LECTURE FIRST. 

rest, to restore the treasure that has been confided to us? 

And these are not mere metaphysical prejudices and 
formulas of the schools : I appeal to the most vulgar 
common sense. 

If I should say to you that a murder has just been 
committed, could you not ask me when, where, by whom, 
wherefore? That is to say, your mind is directed by the 
universal and necessary principles of time, of space, of 
cause, and even of final cause. 

If I should say to you that love or ambition caused the 
murder, would you not at the same instant conceive a 
lover, an ambitious person? This means, again, that there 
is for you no act without an agent, no quality and pheno- 
menon without a substance, without a real subject. 

If I should say to you that the accused pretends that 
he is not the same person who conceived, willed, and exe- 
cuted this murder, and that, at intervals, his personality 
has more than once been changed, would you not say he is 
a fool if he is sincere, and that, although the acts and the 
incidents have varied, the person and the being have re- 
mained the same? 

Suppose that the accused should defend himself on this 
ground, that the murder must serve his interest ; that, 
moreover, the person killed was so unhappy that life was 
a burden to him; that the state loses nothing, since 
in place of two worthless citizens it acquires one who 
becomes useful to it; that, in fine, mankind will not 
perish by the loss of an individual, &c. ; to all these rea- 
sonings would you not oppose the very simple response, 
that this murder, useful perhaps to its author, is not 
the less unjust, and that, therefore, under no pretext 
was it permitted? 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 37 

The same good sense which admits universal and neces- 
sary truths easily distinguishes them from those that are 
not universal and necessary, and are only general, that is 
to say, are applied only to a greater or less number of cases. 

For example, the following is a very general truth: — 
the day succeeds the night; but is it a universal and ne- 
cessary truth? Does it extend to all lands? Yes, to all 
known lands. But does it extend to all possible lands? 
No; for it is possible to conceive of lands plunged in 
eternal night, another system of the world being given. 
The laws of the material world are wmat they are ; 
they are not necessary. Their author might have chosen 
others. With another system of the world one conceives 
other physics, but we cannot conceive other mathematics 
and other morals. Thus it is possible to conceive that 
day and night may not be in the same relation to each 
as that in which we see them; therefore the truth that 
day succeeds night is a very general truth, perhaps even a 
universal truth, but by no means a necessary truth. 

Montesquieu has said that liberty is not a fruit of warm 
climates. I acknowledge, if it is desired, that heat ener- 
vates the spirit, and that warm countries maintain free 
governments with difficulty; but it does not follow that 
there may be no possible exception to this principle: — 
moreover, there have been exceptions; hence it is not an 
absolutely universal principle, much less is it a necessary 
principle. Could you say as much of the principle of 
cause ? Could you in any way conceive, in any time and 
in any place, a phenomenon which begins to appear with- 
out a cause, physical or moral? 

And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary 
principles to general principles, in order to employ and 



38 LECTURE FIRST. 

apply these principles thus abased, and to found upon 
them any reasoning whatever, it would be necessary to 
admit what is called in logic the principle of contradic- 
tion, viz., that a thing cannot at the same time be and 
not be, in order to maintain the integrity of each part of 
the reasoning ; as well as the principle of sufficient reason, 
which alone establishes their connexion and the legiti- 
macy of the conclusion. Now, these two principles, 
without which there is no reasoning, are themselves 
universal and necessary principles ; so that the circle is 
manifest. 

Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save 
that of a single mind, we should be compelled to place in 
that mind, in order that it might exercise itself at all — 
and the mind is such only on the condition that it thinks 
— several necessary principles; it would be beyond the 
power of thought to conceive it deprived of the principle 
of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason. 

How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of 
the efforts of the empirical school to disturb the existence 
or weaken the bearing of universal and necessary prin- 
ciples ! Listen to this school : — it will say to you that the 
principle of cause, given by us as universal and neces- 
sary, is, after all, only a habit of the mind, which, seeing 
in nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts between 
these that connexion which we have called the relation 
of effect to cause. This explanation is nothing but the 
destruction, not only of the principle of causality, but 
even of the notion of cause. The senses show me two balls, 
one of which begins to move, the other of which moves 
after it. Suppose that this succession is renewed and 
continues; it will be constancy added to succession; it 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 39 

will by no means be the connexion of a causative power 
with its effect ; for example, that which consciousness 
attests to us in the least effort of volition. Thus a 
consequent empirist, like Hume, 1 easily proves that no 
sensible experience legitimately gives the idea of cause. 

What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all 
notions of the same kind. Let us at least instance those 
of substance and unity. 

The senses perceive only qualities, phenomena. I touch 
the extension, I see the colour, I am sensible of the 
odour; but do our senses attain the substance that is ex- 
tended, coloured, or odorous? On this point Hume 2 in- 
dulges in pleasantries. He asks which one of our senses 
takes cognisance of substance. What, then, according to 
him and in the system of empiricism, is the notion of 
substance ? An illusion like the notion of cause. 

Neither do the senses give us unity; for unity is iden- 
tity, is simplicity, and the senses show us everything in 
succession and composition. The works of art possess 
unity only because Art, that is to say, the mind of man 
puts it there. If we perceive unity in the works of 
nature, it is not the senses that discover it to us. The 
arrangement of the different parts of an object may con- 
tain unity, but it is a unity of organization, an ideal and 
moral unity which the mind alone conceives, and which 
escapes the senses. 

If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much 
less still are they able to explain the principles in which 
these notions are met, which are universal and necessary. 
In fact, the senses clearly perceive such and such facts, but 
it is impossible for them to embrace what is universal; 

1 1st Series, vol. i. 2 Ibid. 



40 LECTURE FIRST*. 

experience attests what is, it does not reach what can- 
not but be. 

We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain 
universal and necessary principles ; but we maintain that, 
without these principles, empiricism cannot even account 
for the knowledge of the sensible world. 

Take away the principle of causality, and the human 
mind is condemned never to go out of itself and its own 
modifications. All the sensations of hearing, of smell, of 
taste, of touch, of feeling even, cannot inform you what 
their cause is, nor whether they have a cause, But give 
to the human mind the principle of causality, admit that 
every sensation, as well as every phenomenon, every 
change, every event, has a cause, as evidently we are not 
the cause of certain sensations, and that especially these 
sensations must have a cause, and we are naturally led to 
recognise for those sensations causes different from our- 
selves, and that is the first notion of an exterior world. 
The universal and necessary principle of causality alone 
gives it and justifies it. Other principles of the same 
order increase and develop it. 

As soon as you know that there are external objects, I 
ask you whether you do not conceive them in a place that 
contains them. In order to deny it, it would be necessary 
to deny that every body is in a place, that is to say, to re- 
ject a truth of physics, which is at the same time a prin- 
ciple of metaphysics, as well as an axiom of common 
sense. But the place that contains a body is often itself a 
body, which is only more capacious than the first. This 
new body is in its turn in a place. Is this new place also a 
body? Then it is contained in another place more ex- 
tended, and so on ; so that it is impossible for you to con- 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 41 

ceive a body which is not in a place ; and you arrive at 
the conception of a boundless and infinite place, that con- 
tains all limited places and all possible bodies : — that 
boundless and infinite place is space. 

And I tell you in this nothing that is not very simple. 
Look. Do you deny that this water is in a vase? Do 
you deny that this vase is in this hall? Do you deny 
that this hall is in a larger place, which is in its turn in 
another larger still? I can thus carry you on to infinite 
space. If you deny a single one of these propositions, you 
deny all, the first as well as the last ; and if you admit the 
first, you are forced to admit the last. 

It cannot be supposed that sensibility, which is not able 
to give us even the idea of body, alone elevates us to the 
idea of space. The intervention of a superior principle is, 
therefore, here necessary. 

As we believe that every body is contained in a place, 
so we believe that every event happens in time. Can you 
conceive an event happening, except in some point of 
duration? This duration is extended and successively in- 
creased to your mind's eye, and you end by conceiving it 
unlimited like space. Deny duration, and you deny all 
the sciences that measure it, you destroy all the natural 
beliefs upon which human life reposes. It is hardly ne- 
cessary to add that sensibility alone no more explains the 
notion of time than that of space, both of which are never- 
theless inherent in the knowledge of the external world. 

Empiricism is, therefore, convicted of being unable to 
dispense with universal and necessary principles, and of 
being unable to explain them. 

Let us pause : either all our preceding works have ter- 
minated in nothing but chimeras, or they permit us to 
consider as a point definitely acquired for science, that 



42 LECTURE FIRST. 

there arc in the human mind, for whomsoever interro- 
gates it sincerely, principles really stamped with the cha- 
racter of universality and necessity. 

After having established and defended the existence 
of universal and necessary principles, we might investi- 
gate and pursue this kind of principles in all the depart- 
ments of human knowledge, and attempt an exact and 
rigorous classification; but illustrious examples have 
taught us to fear to compromise truths of the greatest 
price by mixing with them conjectures which, in giving 
brilliancy, perhaps, to the spirit of philosophy, dimi- 
nish its authority in the eyes of the wise. We, also, 
following the example of Kant, attempted before you, last 
year, 1 a classification, even a reduction of universal and 
necessary principles, and of all the notions that are con- 
nected with them. This work has not lost for us its 
importance, but we will not reproduce it. In the interest 
of the great cause which we serve, and taking thought 
here only to establish upon solid foundations the doctrine 
which is adapted to the French genius in the nineteenth 
century, we will carefully shun everything that might 
seem personal and hazardous; and, instead of examining, 
criticising, 2 and reconstituting the classification which the 
philosophy of Kcenigsberg has given of universal and 
necessary principles, we prefer, we find it much more use- 
ful, to enable you to penetrate deeper into the nature of 
these principles, by showing you what faculty of ours it 
is that discovers them to us, and to which they are related 
and correspond. 

The peculiarity of these principles is, that each one of 
us in reflection recognises that he possesses them, but that 

1 1st Series, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817. 

2 See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., Kunt, lecture 8. 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 43 

he is not their author. We conceive them and apply 
them, we do not constitute them. Let us interrogate our 
consciousness. Do we refer to ourselves, for example, the 
definitions of geometry, as we do certain movements of 
which we feel ourselves to be the cause? If it is I who 
make these definitions, they are therefore mine, I can 
unmake them, modify them, change them, even annihilate 
them. It is certain that I cannot do it. I am not, then, 
the author of them. It has also been demonstrated that 
the principles of which we have spoken cannot be derived 
from sensation, which is variable, limited, incapable of pro- 
ducing and authorizing anything universal and necessary. 
I arrive, then, at the following consequence, also neces- 
sary : — truth is in me, and not by me. As sensibility puts 
me in relation with the physical world, so another faculty 
puts me in communication with the truths that depend 
upon neither the world nor me, and that faculty is reason. 
There are in men three general faculties which are 
always mingled together, and are rarely exercised except 
simultaneously, but which analysis divides in order to 
study them better, without misconceiving their reciprocal 
play, their intimate connexion, their indivisible unity. 
The first of these faculties is activity, voluntary and free 
activity, in which human personality especially appears, 
and without which the other faculties would be as if they 
were not, since we should not exist for ourselves. Let us 
examine ourselves at the moment when a sensation is 
produced in us ; we shall recognise that there is perception 
only so far as there is some degree of attention, and that 
perception ends at the moment when our activity ends. 
One does not recollect what he did in perfect sleep or in a 
swoon ; because then he had lost voluntary activity, conse- 
quently consciousness; consequently, again, memory. Pas- 



44 LECTURE FIRST. 

sion often, in depriving us of liberty, deprives us, at the same 
time, of the consciousness of our actions and of ourselves; 
then, to use a just and common expression, one knows not 
what he does. It is by liberty that man is truly man, that 
he possesses himself and governs himself; without it, he 
falls again under the yoke of nature; he is, without it, only 
a more admirable and more beautiful part of nature. But 
while I am endowed with activity and liberty, I am also 
passive in other respects; I am subject to the laws of the 
external world ; I suffer and I enjoy without being myself 
the author of my joys and my sufferings; I feel rising 
within me needs, desires, passions, which I have not made, 
which by turns fill my life with happiness and misery. 
Finally, besides volition and sensibility, man has the faculty 
of knowing, has understanding, intelligence, reason, the 
name matters little, by means of which he is elevated to 
truths of different orders, and among others, to universal 
and necessary truths, which suppose in reason, attached 
to its exercise, principles entirely distinct from the impres- 
sions of the senses and the resolutions of the will. 1 

Voluntary activity, sensibility, reason, are all equally 
certain. Consciousness verifies the existence of necessary 
principles, which direct the reason quite as well as that 
of sensations and volitions. I call everything real that 
falls under observation. I suffer; my suffering is real, in 
as much as I am conscious of it; it is the same with 

1 This classification of the human faculties, save some differences more 
nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes the foundation of 
the psychology of our times. See our writings, among others, 1st Series, 
Course of 1816, lectures 23 and 24 : Eistoire du moi ; ibid., Des f aits de 
Conscience; vol. hi., lecture 3, Examen dela Theorie des FacultSs dans Con- 
dillac; vol. iv., lecture 21, des Facidtes selon JReid; vol. v., lecture 8, 
Examen de la Theorie de Kant ; 3rd Series, vol. iv., Preface de la Premib't 
Edition, Exdmen des Lccovs de M. Larorniguiere, Introduction aux (Euvres 
de M. de Biran, etc. 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 45 

liberty ; it is the same with reason and the principles that 
govern it. We can affirm, then, that the existence of 
universal and necessary principles rests upon the testi- 
mony of observation, and even of the most immediate 
and surest observation, that of consciousness. 

But consciousness is only a witness, — it makes what is 
appear; it creates nothing. It is not because conscious- 
ness announces it to you, that you have produced such or 
such a movement, that you have experienced such or such 
an impression. Neither is it because consciousness says 
to us that reason is constrained to admit such or such a 
truth, that this truth exists; it is because it exists that 
it is impossible for reason not to admit it. The truths 
that reason attains by the aid of universal and necessary 
principles with which it is provided, are absolute truths; 
reason does not create them, it discovers them. Reason 
is not the judge of its own principles, and cannot account 
for them, for it only judges by them, and they are to it 
its own laws. Much less does consciousness make these 
principles, or the truths which they reveal to us; for con- 
sciousness has no other office, no other power than in 
some sort to serve as a mirror for reason. Absolute truths 
are, therefore, independent of experience and conscious- 
ness, and, at the same time, they are attested by experi- 
ence and consciousness. On the one hand, these truths 
declare themselves in experience; on the other, no experi- 
ence explains them. Behold how experience and reason 
differ and agree, and how, by means of experience, we 
come to find something which surpasses it. 

So the philosophy which we teach rests neither upon 
hypothetical principles, nor upon empirical principles. 
It is observation itself, but observation applied to the 



*6 LECTURE FIRST. 

higher portion of our knowledge, which furnishes us with 
the principles that we seek, with a point of departure 
at once solid and elevated. 1 

This point of departure we have found, and we do not 
abandon it. We remain immovably attached to it. The 
study of universal and necessary principles, considered 
under their different aspects, and in the great problems 
which they solve, is almost the whole of philosophy; it 
fills it, measures it, divides it. If psychology is the 
regular study of the human mind and its laws, it is 
evident that that of universal and necessary principles 
which preside over the exercise of reason, is the especial 
domain of psychology, which in Germany is called rational 
psychology, and is very different from empirical psychology. 
Since logic is the examination of the value and the legiti- 
macy of our different means of knowing, its most impor- 
tant employment must be to estimate the value and the 
legitimacy of the principles which are the foundations 
of our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation 
of these same principles conducts us to theodicea, and 
opens to us the sanctuary of philosophy, if we would 
ascend to their true source, to that sovereign reason which 
is the first and last explanation of our own. . 

1 This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary principles, 
which was easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to which long dis- 
cussions had already been presented during the two previous years, ap- 
pearing here without the support of these preliminaries, will not perhaps 
be entirely satisfactory to the reader. We beseech him to consult care- 
fully the first volume of the 1st Series of our Course, which contains an 
abridgment, at least, of the numerous lectures of 1816 and 1817, of 
which this is a resumi ; especially to read in the third, fourth, and fifth 
volumes of the 1st Series, the developed analyses, in which, under diffe- 
rent forms, universal and necessary principles are demonstrated as far as 
may be, and in the third volume of the 2nd Series, the lectures devoted 
to establish against Locke the same principles. 



47 



LECTURE II. 

ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES. 

Resume of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of 
universal and necessary principles. — Danger of this question, and its ne- 
cessity. — Different forms under which truth presents itself to us, and 
the successive order of these forms: theory of spontaneity and reflection. 
— The primitive form of principles; abstraction that disengages them 
from that form, and gives them their actual form. — Examination and 
refutation of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles 
by an induction founded on particular notions. 

We may regard as a certain conquest of the experi- 
mental method and of true psychological analysis, the 
establishment of principles which, at the same time that 
they are given to us by the surest of all experiences, that 
of consciousness, have a bearing superior to experience, 
and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. We 
have recognised such principles at the head of nearly all 
the sciences; then, searching among our different faculties 
for that which may have given them to us, we have ascer- 
tained that it is impossible to refer them to any other 
faculty than to that general faculty of knowing which we 
call reason, very different from reasoning to which it 
furnishes its laws. 

That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it 
possible to stop there? 

In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal 



48 LECTURE SECOND. 

and necessary principles are offered to us under forms in 
some sort consecrated. The principle of causality, for ex- 
ample, is thus enounced to us: — Everything that begins to 
appear necessarily has a cause. Other principles have this 
same axiomatic form. But have they always had it, and 
did they spring from the human mind with this logical and 
scholastic apparel, as Minerva sprang all armed from the 
head of Jupiter? With what characters did they show 
themselves at first, before taking those in which they are 
now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive 
characters? In a word, is it possible to find the origin of 
universal and necessary principles, and the route which 
they must have followed in order to arrive at what they 
are to-day? A new problem, the importance of which it 
is easy to feel ; for, if it can be resolved, what light will 
be shed upon these principles ! On the other hand, what 
difficulties must be encountered ! How can we pene- 
trate to the sources of human knowledge, which are con- 
cealed, like those of the Nile ? Is it not to be feared that, 
in plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one 
may encounter a hypothesis ; that, attaching himself, 
then, to this hypothesis, he may transport it from the 
past to the present, and that, being deceived in regard to 
the origin of principles, he may be led to misconceive 
their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to muti- 
late and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would 
not easily explain? This danger is so great, this rock is 
so celebrated in shipwrecks, that before braving it one 
should know how to take many precautions against the 
seductions of the spirit of the system. It is even con- 
ceived that great philosophers, who were timid in no place, 
have suppressed the perilous problem. In fact, by under- 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 49 

taking to grapple with this problem at first, Locke and Con- 
dillac went far astray, 1 and, it must be said, corrupted all 
philosophy at its source. The empirical school, which lauds 
the experimental method so much, turns its back upon it, 
thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study 
of the actual characters of our cognitions, as they are at- 
tested to us by consciousness and reflection, it plunges, 
without light and without guidance, into the pursuit of 
their origin. Reid 2 and Kant 3 showed themselves much 
more observing by confining themselves within the limits 
of the present, through fear of losing themselves in the 
darkness of the past. Both freely treat of universal and 
necessary principles in the form which they now have, 
without asking what was their primitive form. "We much 
prefer this wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit 
of the empirical school. Nevertheless, when a problem is 
given out, so long as it is not solved, it troubles and be- 
sets the human mind. Philosophy ought not to shun it, 
then, but its duty is to approach it only with extreme 
prudence and a severe method. 

We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and 
ourselves, that the primitive state of human cognitions is 
remote from us ; we can scarcely bring it within the 
reach of our vision and submit it to observation ; the 
actual state, on the contrary, is always at our disposal: — it 
is sufficient for us to enter into ourselves, to fathom con- 
sciousness by reflection, and make it give up what it con- 
tains. Setting out from certain facts, we shall not be 
liable to wander subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in 
ascending to the primitive state, we fall into any error, 

1 First Series, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3. 
2 Ibid., vol. iv. ; etc. 3 Ibid., vol. v., lecture 8. 



50 LECTURE SECOND. 

we shall be able to perceive it and repair it by the aid of 
the truth which an impartial observation shall have given 
us ; every origin which shall not legitimately end at the 
point where we are, is by that alone convicted of being 
false, and will deserve to be discarded. 1 

You know that a large portion of the last year was 
spent upon this question. We took, one by one, uni- 
versal and necessary questions submitted to our examina- 
tion, in order to determine the origin of each one of them, 
its primitive form, and the different forms which have 
successively clothed it ; only after having operated thus 
upon a sufficiently large number of principles, did we 
come slowly to a general conclusion," and that conclusion 
we believe ourselves entitled to express here briefly as the 
solid result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at least, 
a most methodical labour. We must either renew before 
you this labour, this analysis, and thereby run the risk of 
not being able to complete the long course that we have 
marked out for ourselves, or we must limit ourselves to 
reminding you of the essential traits of the theory at 
which we arrived. 

This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, with- 

1 We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by 
the errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true psycholo- 
gical analysis, that, before passing to the question of the origin of an idea, 
a notion, a belief, any principle whatever, the actual characters of this idea, 
this notion, this belief, this principle, must have been a long time studied 
and well established, with the firm resolution of not altering them under 
any pretext whatever in wishing to explain them. We believe that we 
have, as Leibnitz says, settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Pro- 
gramme of the Course of 1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., 
lecture 1, Locke; lecture 2, Condillac ; lecture 3, almost entire, 
and lecture 8, p. 260 ; 2nd Series, vol. iii., Exarnen du Syst&me de 
Locke, lecture 16, p. 77 — 87; 3rd Series, vol. iv., Examination of the 
Lectures of M. Loremqui&re, p. 268. 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 51 

out the dress of regular demonstrations upon which it is 
founded, its own evidence will sufficiently establish it. It 
wholly rests upon the distinction between the different 
forms under which truth is presented to us. It is, in its 
somewhat arid generality, as follows :— 

1st, One can perceive truth in two different ways. 
Sometimes one perceives it in such or such a particular 
circumstance. For example, in presence of two apples or 
two stones, and of two other similar objects placed by the 
side of the first, I perceive this truth with absolute cer- 
tainty, viz., that these two stones and these two other 
stones make four stones, — which is in some sort a concrete 
apperception of the truth, because the truth is given to 
us in regard to real and determinate objects. Sometimes 
I also affirm in a general manner that two and two equal 
four, abstracting every determinate object, — which is the 
abstract conception of truth. 

Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes 
in the chronological order of human knowledge? Is it 
not certain, may it not be avowed by every one, that the 
particular precedes the general, that the concrete precedes 
the abstract, that we begin by perceiving such or such a 
determinate truth, in such or such a case, at such or such 
a moment, in such or such a place, before conceiving a 
general truth, independently of every application and 
different circumstances of place and time? 

2d, "We can perceive the same truth without asking 
ourselves this question : Have we the ability not to admit 
this truth? "We perceive it, then, by virtue alone of the 
intelligence which has been given us, and which enters 
spontaneously into exercise ; or rather, we try to doubt 
the truth which we perceive, we attempt to deny it ; we 



5SJ LECTURE SECOND. 

are not able to do it, and then it is presented to reflection 
as superior to all possible negation ; it appears to us no 
longer only as a truth, but as a necessary truth. 

Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflec- 
tion, that reflection supposes an anterior operation, and 
that this operation, in order not to be one of reflection, 
and not to suppose another before it, must be entirely 
spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive 
intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary 
conception? 

Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the indivi- 
dual and in the race. It is, par excellence, the philosophic 
faculty; it sometimes engenders doubt and scepticism, 
sometimes convictions that, for being rational, are only the 
more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial 
logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force 
of habit as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous 
intuition is the true logic of nature. It presides over the 
acquisition of nearly all our cognitions. Children, the 
people, three-fourths of the human race never pass beyond 
it, and rest there with boundless security. 

The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus 
resolved for us in the simplest manner: — it is enough for 
us to determine that operation of the mind which precedes 
all others, without which no other would take place, and 
which is the first exercise, and the first form of our faculty 
of knowing. 1 

1 This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our view is the 
key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our works. One may see, 
vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the Course of 1817, and in a 
fragment entitled, De la Spontaneite et de la Reflexion; vol. iv. of the 
name Series, Examination of Keid's Philosophy, passim • vol. v., Examin- 
ation of Kant's System, lecture 8; 2nd Series, vol. i., passim; vol. iii., 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 53 

Since everything that bears the character of reflection 
cannot be primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it fol- 
lows, that the principles which are the subject of our 
study could not have possessed at first the reflective and 
abstract character with which they are now marked, that 
they must have shown themselves at their origin in some 
particular circumstance, under a concrete and determinate 
form, and that in time they were disengaged from this 
form, in order to be invested with their actual, abstract, 
and universal form. These are the two ends of the chain ; 
it remains for us to seek how the human mind has been 
from one to the other, from the primitive state to the 
actual state, from the concrete state to the abstract state. 

How can we go from the concrete to the abstract? 
Evidently by that well-known operation • which is called 
abstraction. Thus far, nothing is more simple. But it is 
necessary to discriminate between two sorts of abstrac- 
tions. 

In presence of several particular objects, you omit the 
characters which distinguish them, and separately con- 
sider a character which is common to them all — you ab- 
stract this character. Examine the nature and condi- 
tions of this abstraction ; it proceeds by means of compari- 
son, and it is founded on a certain number of particular 
and different cases. Take an example : — examine how wc 
form the abstract and general idea of colour. Place be- 
fore my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I 
here at the first step immediately arrive at a general idea 

Lectures on Judgment ; 3rd Series, Fragments Philosophiqiies, vol. iv., pre- 
face of the first edition, p. 37, etc.; it will be found in different lectures of 
this volume, among others, in the third, On the value of Universal and 
Necessary Principles ; in the fifth, On Mysticism ; and in the eleventh, 
Primary Data of Common Sense. 



5 I- LECTURE SECOND. 

of colour ? Can I at first place on one side the whiteness, 
and on the other side the colour ? Analyse what passes 
within you. You experience a sensation of whiteness. 
Omit the individuality of this sensation, and you wholly 
destroy it ; you cannot neglect the whiteness, and pre- 
serve or abstract the colour ; for, a single colour being 
given, which is a white colour, if you take away that, 
there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to 
colour. Let a blue object succeed this white object, then 
a red object, etc.; having sensations differing from each 
other, you can neglect their differences, and only consider 
what they have in common, that they are sensations of 
sight, that is to say, colours, and you thus obtain the 
abstract and general idea of colour. Take another ex- 
ample : — if you had never smelled but a single flower, the 
violet, for instance, would you have had the idea of odour 
in general? No. The odour of the violet would be for 
you the only odour, beyond which you would not seek, 
you could not even imagine another. But if to the odour 
of the violet is added that of the rose, and other diffe- 
rent odours, in a greater or less number, provided there 
be several, and a comparison be possible, and consequently, 
knowledge of their differences and their resemblances, 
then you will be able to form the general idea of odour. 
What is there in common between the odour of one flower 
and that of another flower, except that they have been 
smelled by aid of the same organ, and by the same person? 
What here renders generalization possible, is the unity of 
the sentient subject which remembers having been modi- 
fied, while remaining the same, by different sensations; 
now, this subject can feel itself identical under different 
modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities of the 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 55 

object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only 
on the^condition of a certain number of sensations experi- 
enced, of odours smelled. In that case, but in that case 
alone, there can be comparison, abstraction, and generali- 
zation, because there are different and similar elements. 

In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and 
necessary principles, we have no need of all this labour. 
Let us take again, for example, the principle of cause. If 
you suppose six particular cases from which you have 
abstracted this principle, it will contain neither more nor 
less ideas than if you had deduced it from a single one. 
To be able to say that the event which I see must have a 
cause, it is not indispensable to have seen several events 
succeed each other. The principle which compels me to 
pronounce this judgment, is already complete in the first 
as in the last event ; it can change in respect to its object, 
it cannot change in itself; it neither increases nor de- 
creases with the greater or less number of its applications. 
The only difference that it is subject to in regard to us, is, 
that we apply it whether we remark it or not, whether we 
disengage it or not from its particular application. The 
question is not to eliminate the particularity of the pheno- 
menon, wherein it appears to us, whether it be the fall of 
a leaf or the murder of a man, in order immediately to 
conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the necessity 
of a cause for everything that begins to exist. Here, it 
is not because I have been the same, or have been affected 
in the same manner in several different cases, that I have 
come to this general and abstract conception. A leaf 
falls : at the same instant I think, I believe, I declare 
that this falling of the leaf must have a cause. A man 
has been killed : at the same instant I believe, I proclaim 



56 LECTURE SECOND, 

that this death must have a cause. Each one of these 
facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and 
something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them 
cannot but have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to 
disengage the universal from the particular, in regard to 
the first fact as well as in regard to the second fact, for 
the universal is in the first quite as well as in the second. 
In fact, if the principle of causality is not universal in 
the first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor in the 
third, nor in a thousandth; for a thousand are not nearer 
than one to the infinite, to absolute universality. It is 
the same, and still more evidently, with necessity. Pay 
particular attention to this point: — if necessity is not in 
the first fact, it cannot be in any; for necessity cannot be 
formed little by little, and by successive increment. If, at 
the first murder that I see, I do not exclaim that this 
murder necessarily has a cause, at the thousandth murder, 
although it shall have been proved that all the others 
have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this 
new murder has, very probably, also its cause ; but I shall 
never have the right to declare that it necessarily has a 
cause. But when necessity and universality are already 
in a single case, that case alone is sufficient to entitle us 
to deduce them from it. 1 

We have established the existence of universal and neces- 
sary principles : we have marked their origin ; we have 
shown that they appear to us at first from a particular fact, 
and we have shown by what process, by what sort of ab- 
straction the mind disengages them from the determinate 
and concrete form which envelopes them, but does not con- 

1 On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st Series, 
vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our other 
Courses. 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 57 

stitute them. Our task, then, seems accomplished. But it 
is not, — we must defend the solution which we have just 
presented to you of the problem of the origin of principles 
against the theory of an eminent metaphysician, whose just 
authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran 1 is, like 
us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensation, 
— he admits universal and necessary principles ; but the 
origin which he assigns to them, puts them, according to 
us, in peril, and would lead back by a detour to the empiri- 
cal school. 

Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in pro- 
positions, embrace several terms. For example, in the 
principle that every phenomenon supposes a cause ; and 
in this, that every quality supposes a substance, by the side 
of the ideas of quality and phenomenon are met the ideas 
of cause and substance, which seem the foundation of these 
two principles- M. de Biran pretends that the two ideas 
are anterior to the two principles which contain them, and 
that we at first find these ideas in ourselves in the con- 
sciousness that we are cause and substance, and that, these 
ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them 
out of ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances 
wherever there are phenomena and qualities, and that the 
principles of cause and substance are thus explained. I 
beg pardon of my illustrious friend ; but it is impossible to 
admit in the least degree this explanation. 

The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no 
means sufficient for the possession of the origin of the prin- 
ciple of causality ; for the idea and the principle are things 
essentially different. You have established, I would say 

3 On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our Introduction at 
the head of his Works. 



58 LECTURE SECOND. 

to M. de Biran, that the idea of cause is found in that of 
productive volition : — you will to produce certain effects, 
and you produce them ; hence the idea of a cause, of a 
particular cause, which is yourself; but between this fact 
and the axiom that all phenomena which appear neces- 
sarily have a cause, there is a gulf. 

You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. 
The idea of cause once found in ourselv/s, induction applies 
it, you say, wherever a new phenomenon appears. But 
let us not be deceived by words, and let us account 
for this extraordinary induction. The following dilemma 
I submit with confidence to the loyal dialectics of M. de 
Biran : — 

Is the induction of which you speak universal and ne- 
cessary ? Then it is a different name for the same thing. 
An induction which forces us universally and necessarily 
to associate the idea of cause with that of every phenome- 
non that begins to appear is precisely what is called the 
principle of causality. On the contrary, is this induction 
neither universal nor necessary ? It cannot supply the 
place of the principle of cause, and the explanation destroys 
the thing to be explained. 

It follows from this that the only true result of these 
various psychological investigations is, that the idea of 
personal and free cause precedes all exercise of the princi- 
ple of causality, but without explaining it. 

The theory which we combat is much more powerless 
in regard to other principles which, far from being exer- 
cised before the ideas from which it is pretended to de- 
duce them, precede them, and even give birth to them. 
How have we acquired the idea of time and that of space, 
except by aid of the principle that the bodies and events, 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 59 

which we see are in time and in space ? "We have seen 1 
that, without this principle, and confined to the data of 
the senses and consciousness, neither time nor space 
would exist for us. Whence have we deduced the idea of the 
infinite, except from the principle that the finite supposes 
the infinite, that all finite and defective things, which we 
perceive by our senses and feel within us, are not sufficient 
for themselves, and suppose something infinite and perfect ? 
Omit the principle, and the idea of the infinite is destroyed. 
Evidently this idea is derived from the application of the 
principle, and it is not the principle which is derived from 
the idea. 

Let us dwell a little longer on the priniciple of substan- 
ces. The question is to know whether the idea of subject, 
of substance, precedes or follows the exercise of the prin- 
ciple. Upon what ground could the idea of substance be 
anterior to the principle that every quality supposes a 
substance ? Upon the ground alone that substance be the 
object of self-observation, as cause is said to be. When I 
produce a certain effect, I may perceive myself in action 
and as cause ; in that case, there would be no need of the 
intervention of any principle ; but it is not, it cannot 
be, the same, when the question is concerning the sub- 
stance which is the basis of the phenomena of conscious- 
ness, of our qualities, our acts, our faculties even ; for this 
substance is not directly observable ; it does not perceive 
itself, it conceives itself. Consciousness perceives sensa- 
tion, volition, thought, it does not perceive their subject. 
Who has ever perceived the soul? Has it not been neces- 
sary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out 
from a principle which has the power to bind the visible to 

1 See lecture 1. 



1)0 LECTURE SECOND. 

the invisible, phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of 
substances? 1 The idea of substance is necessarily pos- 
terior to the application of the principle, and, conse- 
quently, it cannot explain its formation. 

Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say 
that we have in the mind the principle of substances be- 
fore perceiving a phenomenon, quite ready to apply the 
principle to the phenomenon, when it shall present itself; 
we only say that it is impossible for us to perceive a phe- 
nomenon without conceiving at the same instant a sub- 
stance, that is to say, to the power of perceiving a pheno- 
menon, either by the senses, or by consciousness, is joined 
that of conceiving the substance in which it inheres. 
The facts thus take place: — the perception of phenomena 
and the conception of the substance which is their basis 
are not successive, they are simultaneous. Before this 
impartial analysis fall at once two equal and opposite 
errors — one, that experience, exterior or interior, can be- 
get principles ; the other, that principles precede experi- 
ence. 2 

To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by 
the ideas which they contain, is a chimerical one. In 
supposing that all the ideas which enter into principles 
are anterior to them, it is necessary to show how prin- 
ciples are deduced from these ideas, — which is the first 
and radical difficulty. Moreover, it is not true that in all 
cases ideas precede principles, for often principles precede 
ideas, — a second difficulty equally insurmountable. But 

1 See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d Series, vol. iii., 
lecture 18, p. 140-146. 

2 We have developed this analysis, and elucidated these results in the 
17th lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Scries. 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 61 

whether ideas are anterior or posterior to principles, prin- 
ciples are always independent of them ; they surpass them 
by all the superiority of universal and necessary principles 
over simple ideas. 1 

TVe should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity 
of this lecture. But philosophical questions must be 
treated philosophically : it does not belong to us to 
change their character. On other subjects, another lan- 
guage. Psychology has its own language, the entire 
merit of which is a severe precision, as the highest law of 
psychology itself is the shunning of every hypothesis, and 
an inviolable respect for facts. This law we have religi- 
ously followed. "While investigating the origin of univer- 
sal and necessary principles, we have especially endea- 
voured not to destroy the thing to be explained by a 
systematic explanation. Universal and necessary prin- 
ciples have come forth in their integrity from our analysis. 
We have given the history of the different forms which 
they successively assume, and we have shown, that in all 
these changes they remain the same, and of the same 
authority, whether they enter spontaneously and involun- 
tarily into exercise, and apply themselves to particular 



1 We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the impossi- 
bility of legitimately explaining universal and necessary principles by any 
association or induction whatever, founded upon any particular idea, 2nd 
Series, vol. hi., Examem du Systeme de Locke, lecture 19, p. 166: and 3rd 
Series, vol. iv., Introduction aux CEuvres de M. de Biran, p. 319. We 
bave also made known the opinion of Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, 
p. 489. Finally, the profoundest of Reid's disciples, the most enlightened 
judge that we know of things philosophical, Sir W. Hamilton, professor of 
logic in the university of Edinburgh, has not hesitated to adopt the con- 
clusions of our discussion, to which he is pleased to refer his readers: — Dis- 
cussions on Philosophy and Literature, etc., by Sir William Hamilton. 
London. 1852. Appendix 1, p. 588. 



62 LECTURE SECOND. 

and determinate objects, or reflection turns them back 
upon themselves in order to interrogate them in regard 
to their nature, or abstraction makes them appear under 
the form in which their universality and their necessity 
arc manifest. Their certainty is the same under all their 
forms, in all their applications; it has neither generation 
nor origin; it is not born such or such a day, and it does 
not increase with time, for it knows no degrees. We have 
not commenced by believing a little in the principle of 
causality, of substances, of time, of space, of the infinite, 
etc., then believing a little more, then believing wholly. 
These principles have been, from the beginning, what they 
will be in the end, all-powerful, necessary, irresistible. 
The conviction which they give is always absolute, only 
it is not always accompanied by a clear consciousness. 
Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the principle 
of causality, and even in his favourite principle of suffi- 
cient reason, than the most ignorant of men ; but the 
latter applies these principles without reflecting on their 
power, by which he is unconsciously governed, whilst 
Leibnitz is astonished at that power, studies it, and for 
all explanation, refers it to the human mind, and to 
the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to borrow 
the fine expression of M. Royer-Collard, 1 the ignorance of 
the mass of men to its highest source. Such is, thank 



1 CExivres de Reid. vol. iv., p. 435. "When we revolt against primitive 
facts, we equally misconceive the constitution of our intelligence and the 
end of philosophy. Is explaining a fact anything else than deriving it 
from another fact, and if this kind of explanation is to terminate at all, 
does it not suppose facts inexplicable ? The science of the human mind 
will have been carried to the highest degree of perfection it can attain, it 
will be complete, when it shall know how to derive ignorance from the most 
elevated source." 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 6.3 

heaven, the only difference that separates the peasant 
from the philosopher, in regard to those great principles 
of every kind which, in one way or another, discover to 
men the same truths indispensable to their physical, intel- 
lectual, and moral existence, and, in their ephemeral 
life, on the circumscribed point of space and time where 
fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something of 
the universal, the necessary, and the infinite. 



64 



LECTURE III. 

ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES. 

Examination and refutation of Kant's scepticism. — Recurrence to the 
theory of spontaneity and reflection. 

After having recognised the existence of universal and 
necessary principles, their actual characters, and their 
primitive characters, we have to examine their value, and 
the legitimacy of the conclusions which may be drawn 
from them, — we pass from psychology to logic. 

We have defended against Locke and his school the 
necessity and universality of certain principles. We now 
come to Kant, who recognises with us these principles, 
but confines their power within the limits of the subject 
that conceives them, and, so far as subjective, declares 
them to be without legitimate application to any object, 
that is to say, without objectivity, to use the language of 
the philosopher of Koenigsberg, which, right or wrong, 
begins to pass into the philosophic language of Europe. 

Let us comprehend well the import of this new discus- 
sion. The principles that govern our judgments, that pre- 
side over most sciences, that rule our actions, — have they in 
themselves an absolute truth, or are they only regulating 
laws of our thought? The question is, to know whether 
it is true in itself, that every phenomenon has a cause, 



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES. 65 

and every quality a subject, whether everything extended 
is really in space, and every succession in time, etc. If it 
is not absolutely true that every quality has its subject of 
inherence, it is not, then, certain, that we have a soul, a 
real substance of all the qualities which consciousness 
attests. If the principle of causality is only a law of our 
mind, the external world, which this principle discovers 
to us, loses its reality, it is only a succession of phenomena, 
without any effective action over each other, as Hume 
would have it, and even the impressions of our senses are 
destitute of causes. Matter exists no more than the soul. 
Nothing exists; everything is reduced to mobile appear- 
ances, given up to a perpetual becoming, which again is 
accomplished we know not where, since in reality there is 
neither time nor space. Since the principle of sufficient 
reason only serves to put in motion human curiosity, once 
in possession of the fatal secret that it can attain nothing- 
real, this curiosity would be very good to weary itself in 
searching for reasons which inevitably escape it, and in 
discovering relations which correspond only to the wants 
of our mind, and do not in the least correspond to the 
nature of things. In fine, if the principle of causality, of 
substances, of final causes, of sufficient reason, are only our 
modes of conception, God, whom all these principles reveal 
to us, will no more be anything but the last of chimeras, 
which vanishes with all the others in the breath of the 
Critique. 

Kant has established, as well as Reid and ourself, the 
existence of universal and necessary principles ; but an 
involuntary disciple of his century, an unconscious servant 
of the empirical school, to which he places himself in the 
attitude of an adversary, he makes to it the immense 



66 LECTURE THIRD. 

concession that these principles are applied only to the 
impressions of sensibility, that their part is to put these 
impressions in a certain order, but that beyond these im- 
pressions, beyond experience, their power expires. This 
concession has ruined the whole enterprise of the German 
philosopher. 

This enterprise was at once honest and great. Kant, 
grieved at the scepticism of his times, proposed to arrest 
it by fairly meeting it. He thought to disarm Hume by 
conceding to him that our highest conceptions do not ex- 
tend themselves beyond the enclosure of the human mind ; 
and at the same time, he supposed that he had sufficiently 
vindicated the human mind by restoring to it the univer- 
sal and necessary principles which direct it. But, accord- 
ing to the strong expression of M. Royer-Collard, " one 
does not encounter scepticism, — as soon as he has pene- 
trated into the human understanding he has completely 
taken it by storm/' A severe circumspection is one thing, 
scepticism is another. Doubt is not only permitted, it is 
commanded by reason itself in the employment and legi- 
timate applications of our different faculties ; but when 
it is applied to the legitimacy itself of our faculties, it no 
longer elucidates reason, it overwhelms it. In fact, with 
what would you have reason defend herself, when she has 
called herself in question? Kant himself, then, overturned 
the dogmatism which he proposed at once to restrain 
and save, at least in morals, and he put German philo- 
sophy upon a route, at the end of which was an abyss. 
In vain has this great man — for his intentions and his 
character, without speaking of his genius, merit for him 
this name — undertaken with Hume an ingenious and 
learned controversy ; he has been vanquished in this 



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES. 67 

controversy, and Hume remains master of the field of 
battle. 

What matters it, in fact, whether there may or may not 
be in the human mind universal and necessary principles, 
if these principles only serve to classify our sensations, 
and to make us ascend, step by step, to ideas that are most 
sublime, but have for ourselves no reality. The human 
mind is, then, as Kant himself well expressed it, like a 
banker who should take bills ranged in order on his desk 
for real values ; — he possesses nothing but paper. We have 
thus returned, then, to that conceptualism of the middle 
age, which, concentrating truth within the human intelli- 
gence, makes the nature of things a phantom of intelli- 
gence projecting itself everywhere out of itself, at once 
triumphant and impotent, since it produces every thing, 
and produces only chimeras. 1 

The reproach which a sound philosophy will content it- 
self with making to Kant, is, that his system is not in ac- 
cordance with facts. Philosophy can and must separate 
itself from the crowd for the explanation of facts ; but, it 

1 On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the In- 
troduction to the inedited works of Ahelard, and also 1st Series, vol. iv., 
lecture 21, p. 457 ; 2nd Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215, and the work 
already cited on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, p. 49 : " Nothing exists in this 
world which has not its law more general than itself. There is no indivi- 
dual that is not related to a species; there are no phenomena bound together 
that are not united to a plan. And it is necessary there should really be 
in nature species and a plan, if everything has been made with weight and 
measure, cum pondere et menswa, without which our very ideas of species 
and a plan would only be chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. 
If it is pretended that there are individuals and no species, things in juxta- 
position and no plan ; for example, human individuals more or less different, 
and no human type, and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and 
good ; but in that case there is nothing general in the world, except in the 
human understanding, that is to say, in other terms, the world and nature 
are destitute of order and reason except in the head of man." 



0*8 LECTURE THIRD. 

cannot be too often repeated, it must not in the explana- 
tion destroy what it pretends to explain ; otherwise it 
does not explain, it imagines. Here, the important fact 
which it is the question to explain is the belief itself of the 
human mind, and the system of Kant annihilates it. 

In fact, when we are speaking of the truth of universal 
and necessary principles, we do not believe that they are 
true only for us : — we believe them to be true in themselves, 
and still true, were there no mind of ours to conceive them. 
We regard them as independent of us ; they seem to us 
to impose themselves upon our intelligence by the force of 
the truth that is in them. So, in order to express faith- 
fully what passes within us, it would be necessary to re- 
verse the proposition of Kant, and instead of saying with 
him, that these principles are the necessary laws of our 
mind, therefore they have no absolute value out of our 
mind ; we should much rather say, that these principles 
have an absolute value in themselves, therefore we cannot 
but believe them. 

And even this necessity of belief with which the new 
scepticism arms itself, is not the indispensable condition 
of the application of principles. We have established 1 that 
the necessity of believing supposes reflection, examination, 
an effort to deny and the want of power to do it ; but be- 
fore all reflection, intelligence spontaneously seizes the 
truth, and, in the spontaneous apperception, is not the 
sentiment of necessity, nor consequently that character 
of subjectivity of which the German school speaks so 
much. 

Let us, then, here recur to that spontaneous intuition of 
truth, which Kant knew not, in the circle where his pro- 

1 See preceding lecture. 



THE VALUE OF PKINCIPLES. 69 

foundly reflective and somewhat scholastic habits held him 
captive. 

Is it true that there is no judgment, even affirmative in 
form, which is not mixed with negation ? 

It seems indeed that every affirmative judgment is at 
the same time negative ; in fact, to affirm that a thing 
exists, is to deny its non-existence ; as every negative judg- 
ment is at the same time affirmative; for to deny the exis- 
tence of a thing, is to affirm its non-existence. If it is so, 
then every judgment, whatever may be its form, affirma- 
tive or negative, since these two forms come back to each 
other, supposes a pre-established doubt in regard to the 
existence of the thing in question, supposes some exercise 
of reflection, in the course of which the mind feels itself 
constrained to bear such or such a judgment, so that at 
this point of view the foundation of the judgment seems 
to be in its necessity • and then recurs the celebrated ob- 
jection : — if you judge thus only because it is impossible 
for you not to do it, you have for a guaranty of the truth 
nothing but yourself and your own ways of conceiving ; it 
is the human mind that transports its laws out of itself ; 
it is the subject that makes the object out of its own image, 
without ever going beyond the enclosure of subjectivity. 

We respond, goingdirectly to the root of the difficulty: — it 
is not true that all our judgments are negative. We admit 
that in the reflective state every affirmative judgment sup- 
poses a negative judgment, and reciprocally. But is reason 
exercised only on the condition of reflection ? Is there not 
a primitive affirmation which implies no negation ? As we 
often act without deliberating on our action, without pre- 
meditating it, and as we manifest in this case an activity 
Unit is free still, but free with a liberty that is not reflec- 



70 



LECTURE THIRD. 



tive ; so reason often perceives the truth without travers- 
ing doubt or error. Reflection is a return to consciousness, 
or to an operation wholly different from it. We do not find, 
then, in any primitive fact, that every judgment which 
contains it presupposes another in which it is not. We 
thus arrive at a judgment free from all reflection, to an 
affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an imme- 
diate intuition, the legitimate child of the natural energy 
of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of 
the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet. Such is the first 
act of the faculty of knowing. If one contradicts this pri- 
mitive affirmation, the faculty of knowing falls back upon 
itself, examines itself, attempts to call in doubt the truth 
it has perceived ; it cannot ; it affirms anew what it had 
affirmed at first ; it adheres to the truth already recognis- 
ed, but with a new sentiment, the sentiment that it is not 
in its power to divest itself of the evidence of this same 
truth ; then, but only then, appears that character of ne- 
cessity and subjectivity that some would turn against the 
truth, as though truth could lose its own value, while 
penetrating deeper into the mind and there triumphing 
over doubt ; as though reflective evidence of it were the 
less evidence ; as though, moreover, the necessary concep- 
tion of it were the only form, the primary form of the per- 
ception of truth. The scepticism of Kant, to which good 
sense so easily does justice, is driven to the extreme and 
forced within its entrenchment by the distinction between 
spontaneous reason and reflective reason. Reflection is 
the theatre of the combats which reason engages in with 
itself, with doubt, sophism and error. But above reflec- 
tion is a sphere of light and peace, where reason perceives 
truth without returning on itself, for the sole reason 



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES. 71 

that truth is truth, and because God has made the reason 
to perceive it, as he has made the eye to see and the ear 
to hear. 

Analyse, in fact, with impartiality, the fact of sponta- 
neous apperception, and you will be sure that it has no- 
thing subjective in it except what it is impossible it should 
not have, to wit, the me which is mingled with the fact 
without constituting it. The me inevitably enters into all 
knowledge, since it is the subject of it. Reason directly 
perceives truth ; but it is in some sort augmented, in con- 
sciousness, and then we have knowledge. Consciousness 
is there its witness, and not its judge ; its only judge is 
reason, a faculty subjective and objective together, accord- 
ing to the language of Germany, which immediately at- 
tains absolute truth, almost without personal intervention 
on our part, although it might not enter into exer- 
cise if personality did not precede or were not added 
to it. 1 

Spontaneous apperception constitutes natural logic. Re- 
flective conception is the foundation of logic properly so 
called. One is based upon itself, verum index sui; the 
other is based upon the impossibility of the reason, in spite 
of all its efforts, not betaking itself to truth and believing 
in it. The form of the first is an affirmation accompanied 
with an absolute security, and without the least suspicion 
of a possible negation ; the form of the second is reflective 
affirmation, that is to say, the impossibility of denying and 
the necessity of affirming. The idea of negation governs 
ordinary logic, whose affirmations are only the laborious 
product of two negations. Natural logic proceeds by 

1 On the just limits of the personality and the impersonality of reason, see 
the following lecture, near the close. 



72 



LECTURE THIRD. 



affirmations stamped with a simple faith, which instinct 
alone produces and sustains. 

Now, will Kant reply that this reason, which is much 
purer than that which he has known and described, which 
is wholly pure, which is conceived as something disengaged 
from reflection, from volition, from everything that con- 
stitutes personality, is nevertheless personal, since we have 
a consciousness of it, and since it is thus marked with sub- 
jectivity ? To this argument we have nothing to respond, 
except that it is destroyed in the excess of its pretension. 
In fact, if, that reason may not be subjective, we must in 
no way participate in it, and must not have even a con- 
sciousness of its exercise, then there is no means of ever 
escaping this reproach of subjectivity, and the ideal of 
objectivity which Kant pursued is a chimerical, extrava- 
gant ideal, above, or rather beneath, all true intelligence, 
all reason worthy the name ; for it is demanding that this 
intelligence and this reason should cease to have conscious- 
ness of themselves, whilst this is precisely what character- 
ises intelligence and reason. 1 Does Kant mean, then, that 
reason, in order to possess a really objective power, cannot 
make its appearance in a particular subject, that it must 
be, for example, wholly outside of the subject which I am? 
Then it is nothing for me; a reason that is not mine, that, 
under the pretext of being universal, infinite and absolute in 
its essence, does not fall under the perception of my con- 
sciousness, is for me as if it were not. To wish that rea- 
son should wholly cease to be subjective, is to demand 
something impossible to God himself. No, God himselt 

1 We have everywhere maintained, that consciousness is the condition, or 
rather the necessary form of intelligence. Not to go beyond this volume, 
Hee farther on, lecture 5. 



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES 73 

can understand nothing except in knowing- it, with his 
intelligence and with the consciousness of this intelligence. 
There is subjectivity, then, in divine knowledge itself; if 
this subjectivity involves scepticism, God is also condemned 
to scepticism, and he can no more escape from it than men ; 
or indeed, if this is too ridiculous, if the knowledge which 
God has of the exercise of his own intelligence does not 
involve scepticism for him, neither do the knowledge which 
we have of the exercise of our intelligence, and the subjec- 
tivity attached to this knowledge, involve it for us. 

In truth, when we see the father of German philosophy 
thus losing himself in the labyrinth of the problem of the 
subjectivity and the objectivity of first principles, we are 
tempted to pardon Reid for having disdained this problem, 
for limiting himself to repeating that the absolute truth of 
universal and necessary principles rests upon the veracity 
of our faculties, and that upon the veracity of our faculties 
we are compelled to accept their testimony. " To explain," 
says he, " why we are convinced by our senses, by con- 
sciousness, by all our faculties, is an impossible thing; we 
say — this is so, it cannot be otherwise, and we can go no 
farther. Is not this the expression of an irresistible be- 
lief, of a belief which is the voice of nature, and against 
which we contend in vain? Do we wish to penetrate 
farther, to demand of our faculties, one by one, what are 
their titles to our confidence, and to refuse them confidence 
until they have produced their claims? Then, I fear that 
this extreme wisdom would conduct us to folly, and that, 
not having been willing to submit to the common lot of 
humanity, we should be deprived of the light of common 
dense/' 1 

1 1st Series, vol. iv. ; lecture 22, p. 494. 



74- LECTURE THIRD. 

Let us support ourselves also by the following admirable 
passage of him who is, for so many reasons, the venerated 
master of the French philosophy of the nineteenth century. 
" Intellectual life," says M. Royer-Collard, " is an uninter- 
rupted succession, not only of ideas, but of explicit or im- 
plicit beliefs. The beliefs of the mind are the powers of 
the soul and the motives of the will. That which deter- 
mines us to belief we call evidence. Reason renders no 
account of evidence; to condemn reason to account for 
evidence, is to annihilate it, for it needs itself an evidence 
which is fitted for it. These are fundamental laws of belief 
which constitute intelligence, and as they flow from the 
same source they have the same authority; they judge by 
the same right ; there is no appeal from the tribunal of 
one to that of another. He who revolts against a single 
one revolts against all, and abdicates his whole nature/' 3 

Let us deduce the consequences of the facts of which we 
have just given an exposition. 

1st, The argument of Kant, which is based upon the 
character of necessity in principles in order to weaken 
their objective authority, applies only to the form imposed 
by reflection on these principles, and does not reach their 
spontaneous application, wherein the character of necessity 
no longer appears. 

2nd, After all, to conclude with the human race from the 
necessity of believing in the truth of what we believe, is 
not to conclude badly ; for it is reasoning from effect to 
cause, from the sign to the thing signified. 

3rd, Moreover, the value of principles is above all de- 
monstration. Psychological analysis seizes, takes, as it 
were, by surprise, in the fact of intuition, an affirmation 

1 (Euvres dejieid, vol. iii., p. 450. 



TIIE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES. 75 

that is absolute, that is inaccessible to doubt; it establishes 
it; and this is equivalent to demonstration. To demand 
any other demonstration than this, is to demand of reason 
an impossibility, since absolute principles, being necessary 
to all demonstration, could only be demonstrated by them- 
selves. 1 

1 We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an exposi- 
tion and detailed refutation of the Critique of Pure Reason and its sad con- 
clusion; the little that we say of it is sufficient for our purpose, which is 
much less historical than dogmatical. We refer the reader to a volume that 
we have devoted to the father of German philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., 
in which we have again taken up and developed some of the arguments that 
are here used, in which we believe that we have irresistibly exposed the 
capital defect of the transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German 
school, that it leads to scepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, 
chimerical, extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve 
them. See especially lectures 6 and 8. 



76 



LECTURE IV. 

GOD THE PBINCTPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 

Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute truth? — 
Four hypotheses : Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular 
beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute 
truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in abso- 
lute truth, but do not explain it; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does 
not exist in itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God. — Plato; 
St Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fe'ne'lon; Bossuet; Leibnitz. — 
Truth the mediator between God and man. — Essential distinctions. 

"We have justified the principles that govern our intelli- 
gence; we have become confident that there is truth out- 
side of us, that there are verities worthy of that name, 
which we can perceive, which we do not make, which are 
not solely conceptions of our mind, which would still 
exist although our mind should not perceive them. Now 
this other problem naturally presents itself: What, then, 
in themselves, are these universal and necessary truths? 
where do they reside? whence do they come? We do not 
raise this problem, and the problems that it embraces; 
the human mind itself proposes them, and it is fully satis- 
fied only when it has resolved them, and when it has 
reached the extreme limit of knowledge that it is within 
its power to attain. 

It is certain that the principles which, in all the orders 
of knowledge, discover to us absolute and necessary truths, 
constitute part of our reason, which surely makes its 
dwelling in us, and is intimately connected with per- 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 77 

sonality in the depths of intellectual life. It follows that 
the truth, which reason reveals to us, falls thereby into 
close relation with the subject that perceives it, and seems 
only a conception of our mind. Nevertheless, as we have 
proved, we perceive truth, we are not the authors of it. 
If the person that I am, if the individual me does not, 
perhaps, explain the whole of reason, how could it explain 
truth, and absolute truth? Man, limited and passing 
away, perceives necessary, eternal, infinite truth; that is 
for him a privilege sufficiently high; but he is neither the 
principle that sustains truth, nor the principle that gives 
it being. Man may say, My reason; but give him credit 
for never having dared to say, My truth. 

If absolute truths are beyond man who perceives them, 
once more, where are they, then? A peripatetic would 
respond — In nature. Is it, in fact, necessary to seek for 
them any other subject than the beings themselves which 
they govern? What are the laws of nature, except certain 
properties which our mind disengages from the beings 
and phenomena in which they are met, in order to con- 
sider them apart? Mathematical principles are nothing 
more. For example, the axiom thus expressed — The whole 
is greater than any of its parts, is true of any whole and 
part whatever. The principle of contradiction, considered 
in its logical title, as the condition of all our judgments, 
of all our reasonings, constitutes a part of the essence of 
all being, and no being can exist without containing it. 
The universal exists, says Aristotle, but it does not exist 
apart from particular beings. 1 

} See our work entitled, Metaphysics of Aristotle, 2nd edition, passim. 
In Aristotle himself, see especially Metaphysics, book vii., chap, xii., and 
book xiii., chap. ix. 



78 LECTURE FOURTH. 

This theory which considers universals as having their 
basis in things, is a progress towards the pure conceptu- 
alism which we have in the beginning indicated and 
shunned. Aristotle is much more of a realist than Abelard 
and Kant. He is quite right in maintaining that uni- 
versals are in particular things, for particular things could 
not be without universals; universals give to them their 
fixity, even for a day, and their unity. But from the fact 
that universals are in particular beings, is it necessary to 
conclude that they, wholly and exclusively, reside there, 
and that they have no other reality than that of the ob- 
jects to which they are applied? It is the same with 
principles of which universals are the constitutive ele- 
ments. It is, it is true, in the particular fact, of a parti- 
cular cause producing a particular event, that is given us 
the universal principle of causality; but this principle is 
much more extensive than the facts, for it is applied, not 
only to this fact, but to a thousand others. The particular 
fact contains the principle, but it does not wholly contain 
it, and, far from giving the basis of the principle, it is 
based upon it. As much may be said of other principles. 

Perhaps it will be replied that, if a principle is certainly 
more extensive than such a fact, or such a being, it is not 
more extensive than all facts and all beings, and that na- 
ture, considered as a whole, can explain that which each 
particular being does not explain. But nature, in its 
totality, is still only a finite and contingent thing, whilst 
the principles to be explained have a necessary and in- 
finite bearing. The idea of the infinite can come neither 
from any particular being, nor from the whole of beings. 
Entire nature will not furnish us the idea of perfection, 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 79 

for all the beings of nature are imperfect. Absolute prin- 
ciples govern, then, all facts and all beings, they do not 
spring from them. 

Will it be necessary to come to the opinion, then, that ab- 
solute truths, being explicable neither by humanity nor by 
nature, subsist by themselves, and are to themselves their 
own foundation and their own subject ? 

But this opinion contains still more absurdities than the 
preceding ; for, I ask, what are truths, absolute or contin- 
gent, that exist by themselves, out of things in which they 
are found, and out of the intelligence that conceives them? 
Truth is, then, only a realised abstraction. There are no 
quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against good 
sense; and if such is the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle 
is right in his opposition to it. But such a theory is only 
a chimera that Aristotle created for the pleasure of com- 
bating it. 

Let us hasten to remove absolute truths from this am- 
biguous and equivocal state. And how ? By applying to 
them a principle which should now be familiar to you. 
Yes, truth necessarily appeals to something beyond itself. 
As every phenomenon has its subject of inherence, as our 
faculties, our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, exist 
only in a being which is ourselves, so truth supposes a 
being in which it resides, and absolute truths suppose a 
being absolute as themselves, wherein they have their 
final foundation. We come thus to something absolute, 
which is no longer suspended in the vagueness of abstrac- 
tion, but is a being substantially existing. This being, 
absolute and necessary, since it is the subject of necessary 
and absolute truths, this being which is at the foundation 



80 LECTURE FOURTH. 

of truth as its very essence, in a single word, is called 
God. 1 

This theory, which conducts from absolute truth to 
absolute being, is not new in the history of philosophy : 
it goes back to Plato. 

Plato, 2 in searching for the principles of knowledge 
clearly saw, with Socrates his master, that the least defi- 
nition, without which there can be no precise knowledge, 
supposes something universal and one, which does not 
come within the reach of the senses, which reason alone 
can discover; this something universal and one he called 
Idea. 

Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come 
from material, changing, and mobile things, to which they 
are applied, and which render them intelligible. On the 
other hand, it is not the human mind that constitutes 
ideas ; for man is not the measure of truth. 

Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, ra ovrug ovra, since 
they alone communicate to sensible things and to human 
cognitions their truth and their unity. But does it follow 
that Plato gives to Ideas a substantial existence, that he 
makes of them beings properly so called. It is important 
that no cloud should be left on this fundamental point of 
the Platonic theory. 

1 There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as we shall 
successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude 
any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God ; but we 
begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, part ii., God, 
the Principle of Beauty, and part iii., God, the Principle of the Good, and 
the last lecture, which sums up the whole course. 

3 We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series, vol. iv. 
p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2nd Series, lecture 7, on Plato 
and Aristotle, especially 3rd Series, vol. i., a few words on the Language 
of the Tlieory of Ideas, p. 121; our work on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, p. 
4S and 149, and our translation of Piato, passim. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 81 

At first, if any one should pretend that in Plato Ideas 
are beings subsisting by themselves, without inter-connec- 
tion and without relation to a common centre, numerous 
passages of the Timaeus might be objected to him, 1 in 
which Plato speaks of Ideas as forming in their whole an 
ideal unity, which is the reason of the unity of the visible 
world. 2 

Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct 
unity, a unity separate from God ? But, in order to sus- 
tain this assertion, it is necessary to forget so many pas- 
sages of the Republic, in which the relations of truth and 
science with the Good, that is to say, with God, are marked 
in brilliant characters. 

Let not that magnificent comparison be forgotten, in 
which, after having said that the sun produces in the 
physical world light and life, Socrates adds : " So thou 
art able to say, intelligible beings not only hold from 
the Good that which renders them intelligible, but also 
their being and their essence/' 3 So, intelligible beings, 
that is to say, Ideas, are not beings that exist by them- 
selves. 

Men go on repeating with assurance that the Good, in 
Plato, is only the idea of the good, and that an idea is 
not God. I reply, that the Good is in fact an idea, ac- 
cording to Plato, but that the idea here is not a pure con- 
ception of the mind, an object of thought, as the peripa- 
tetic school understood it ; I add, that the Idea of the 

1 Aristotle first stated this ; modern peripatetics have repeated it ; and 
after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and philo- 
sophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most illus- 
trious representative. 

2 See particularly p. 121 of the Timaem, vol. xii. of our translation. 
* Republic, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57. 



82 LECTURE FOURTH. 

Good is in Plato the first of Ideas, and that, for this 
reason, while remaining for us an object of thought, it is 
confounded as to existence with God. If the Idea of the 
Good is not God himself, how will the following passage, 
also taken from the Republic, be explained ? " At the 
extreme limits of the intellectual world is the Idea of the 
Good, which is perceived with difficulty, but, in fine, can- 
not be perceived without concluding that it is the source 
of all that is beautiful and good ; that in the visible 
world it produces light, and the star whence the light 
directly comes, that in the invisible world it directly pro- 
duces truth and intelligence/' 1 Who can produce, on the 
one hand, the sun and light, on the other, truth and intel- 
ligence, except a real being ? 

But all doubt disappears before the following passages 
from the Phcedrus, neglected, as it would seem designedly, 
by the detractors of Plato: "In this transition, (the 
soul) contemplates justice, contemplates wisdom, contem- 
plates science, not that wherein enters change, nor that 
which shows itself different in the different objects which 
we are pleased to call beings, but* science as it exists in 

that which is called being, par excellence " 2 — " It 

belongs to the soul to conceive the universal, that is 
to say, that which, in the diversity of sensations, can 
be comprehended under a rational unity. This is the 
remembrance of what the soul has seen during its 
journey in the train of Deity, when, disdaining what 
we improperly call beings, it looked upwards to the 
only true being. So it is just that the thought of the 
philosopher should alone have wings ; for its remembrance 
is always as much as possible with the things which 

1 Republic, book vii., p, 20. 8 Phmdrm, vol. vi., p. 51. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. S3 

make God a true God, in as much as he is with them." 1 

So the objects of the philosopher's contemplation, that 
is to say, Ideas, are in God, and it is by these, by his 
essential union with these, that God is the true God, the 
God who, as Plato admirably says in the Sophist, partici- 
pates in august and holy intelligence. 2 

It is therefore, certain, that, in the true Platonic 
theory, Ideas are not beings in the vulgar sense of the 
word, beings which would be neither in the mind of man, 
nor in nature, nor in God, and would subsist only by 
themselves. No, Plato considers Ideas as being at once 
the principles of sensible things, of which they are the 
laws, and the principles also of human knowledge, which 
owes to them its light, its rule, and its end, and the essen- 
tial attributes of God, that is to say, God himself. 

Plato is truly the father of the doctrine which we have 
explained, and the great philosophers who have attached 
themselves to his school have always professed this same 
doctrine. 

The founder of Christian metaphysics, St. Augustine, 
is a declared disciple of Plato : everywhere he speaks, like 
Plato, of the relation of human reason to the divine reason, 
and of truth to God. In the City of God, book x., chap, 
ii., and in chap. ix. of book vii. of the Confessions, he goes 
to the extent of comparing the Platonic doctrine with 
that of St. John. 

He adopts, without reserve, the theory of Ideas. Book 
of Eighty -three Questions, question 46 : " Ideas are the pri- 
mordial forms, and, as it were, the immutable reasons of 
things ; they are not created, they are eternal, and always 
the same : they are contained in the divine intelligence ; 

1 Phcednu, vol. vi., p. 55. 8 Vol. xi., p, 281. 



84 LECTUKE FOURTH. 

and without being subject to birth and death, they are 
the types according to which is formed every thing that is 
born and dies." 1 

" What man, pious, and penetrated with true religion, 
would dare to deny that all things that exist, that is to say, 
all things that, each of its kind, possess a determinate 
nature, have been created by God? This point being 
once conceded, can it be said that God has created things 
without reason ? If it is impossible to say or think this, 
it follows that all things have been created with reason. 
But the recison of the existence of a man cannot be the 
same as the reason of the existence of a horse ; that is 
absurd ; each thing has therefore been created by virtue 
of a reason that is peculiar to it. Now, where can these 
reasons be, except in the mind of the Creator ? For he 
saw nothing out of himself, which he could use as a model 
for creating what he created : such an opinion would be 
sacrilege. 2 

" If the reasons of things to be created and things 
created are contained in the divine intelligence, and if 
there is nothing in the divine intelligence but the eternal 
and immutable, the reasons of things which Plato calls 
Ideas, are the eternal and immutable truths, by the par- 
ticipation in which every thing that is is such as it is." 3 

St. Thomas himself, who scarcely knew Plato, and who 

1 Edit. Beaed., vol. vi., p. 17 : Idex sunt formal qucedam principales et 
ratlones rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quo3 ipsa formatos non sunt ac 
per hoc ceterna ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quo? in divina intelligen- 
tea continently .... 

2 Ibid. vol. vi., p. 18. Singula igitur propriis creata sunt rationibus. 
Has autem rationes ubi arbitrandum est esse nisi in mente Creatoris f non 
enim extra se quidquam intuebahir, ut secundum id constitueret quod con- 
stituebat : nam hoc opinari sacrilegum est. 

3 Ibid. See also, book of the Confessions, bonk ii. of the Free Will, bonk 
xii. of the Trinity, book vii. of the City of God, &c. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 85 

was often enough held by Aristotle in a kind of empiric- 
ism, carried away by Christianity and St. Augustine, let the 
sentiment escape him, " that our natural reason is a sort 
of participation in the divine reason, that to this we owe 
our knowledge and our judgments, that this is the reason 
why it is said, that we see everything in God." 1 There 
are in St. Thomas many other similar passages, of per- 
haps an expressive Platonism, which is not the Platonism 
of Plato, but of the Alexandrians. 

The Cartesian philosophy, in spite of its profound origi- 
nality, and its wholly French character, is full of the 
Platonic spirit. Descartes has no thought of Plato, whom 
apparently he has never read; in nothing does he imitate 
or resemble him: nevertheless, from the first, he is met 
in the same regions with Plato, whither he goes by a dif- 
ferent route. 

The notion of the infinite and the perfect is for Descartes 
what the universal, the Idea, is for Plato. No sooner has 
Descartes found by consciousness that he thinks, than he 
concludes from this that he exists, then, in course, by 
consciousness still, he recognises himself as imperfect, full 
of defects, limitations, miseries, and, at the same time, 
conceives something infinite and perfect. He possesses 
the idea of the infinite and the perfect ; but this idea is 
not his own work, for he is imperfect; it must then have 
been put into him by another being endowed with per- 
fection, whom he conceives, whom he does not possess: — 
that being is God. Such is the process by which Des- 

1 Sum-ma totius theologies. Primae partis qusest. xii. art. 11. Ad tertium 
dicendum, quod omnia dicimus in Deo videre, et secundum ipsum de omni- 
bus judicare, in quantum per participationem sui luminis omnia cognoscimvs 
et dijudicamus. Nam et ipsum lumen naturale rationis participatio qurr.- 
dam est divini luminis 



86 LECTURE FOURTH. 



cartes, setting out from Iris own thought, and his own being, 
elevated himself to God. This process, so simple, which 
he so simply exposes in the Discours de la Methode, he 
will put successively, in the Meditations, in the Reponses 
aux Objections, in the Principes, under the most diverse 
forms, he will accommodate it, if it is necessary, to the 
language of the schools, in order that it may penetrate 
into them. After all, this process is compelled to con- 
clude, from the idea of the infinite and the perfect, in the 
existence of a cause of this idea, adequate, at least, to the 
idea itself, that is to say, infinite and perfect. One sees that 
the first difference between Plato and Descartes is, that the 
ideas which in Plato are at once conceptions of our mind, 
and the principles of things, are for Descartes, as well as for 
all modern philosophy, only our conceptions, amongst which 
that of the infinite and perfect occupies the first place; the 
second difference is, that Plato goes from ideas to God by 
the principle of substances, if we may be allowed to use 
this technical language of modern philosophy; whilst 
Descartes employs rather the principle of causality, and 
concludes — well understood without syllogism — from the 
idea of the infinite and the perfect in a cause also perfect 
and infinite. 1 But under these differences, and in spite of 
many more, is a common basis, a genius the same, which 
at first elevates us above the senses, and, by the interme- 
diary of marvellous ideas that are incontestably in us, bears 
us towards him who alone can be their substance, who is 
the infinite and perfect author of our idea of infinity and 

1 On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the existence of 
God and the true process that he employs, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 
12, p. 64, lecture 22, p. 509—518; vol. v., lecture 6, p. 205; 2nd Series, 
vol. xi., lecture 11; especially the three articles, already cited, of the 
Journal des Savants for the year 1850. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 87 

perfection. For tins reason, Descartes belongs to the 
family of Plato and Socrates. 

The idea of the perfect and the finite being once intro- 
duced into the philosophy of the seventeenth century, it 
becomes there for the successors of Descartes what the 
theory of ideas became for the successors of Plato. 

Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, re- 
minds us with the least disadvantage, although very im- 
perfectly still, of the manner of Plato: he sometimes 
expresses its elevation and grace ; but he is far from pos- 
sessing the Socratic good sense, and, it must be confessed, 
no one has clouded more the theory of ideas by exagger- 
ations of every kind which he has mingled with them. 1 
Instead of establishing that there is in the human reason, 
wholly personal as it is by its intimate relation with our 
other faculties, something also which is not personal, 
something universal which permits it to elevate itself to 
universal truths, Malebranche does not hesitate to abso- 
lutely confound the reason that is in us with the divine 
reason itself. Moreover, according to Malebranche, we do 
not directly know particular things, sensible objects; we 
know them only by ideas ; it is the intelligible extension 
and not the material extension that we immediately per- 
ceive ; in vision the proper object of the mind is the uni- 
versal, the idea ; and as the idea is in God, it is in God 
that we see all things. We can understand how well- 

1 See on Malebranche, 2nd Series, lecture 2, and 3rd Series, vol. iii., 
Modern Philosophy, as well as the Fragments of Cartesian Philosophy; pre- 
face of the 1st edition of our Pascal: — " On this basis, so pure, Malebranche 
is not steady; is excessive and rash, I know; narrow and extreme, I do not 
fear to say; but always sublime, expressing only one side of Plato, but ex- 
pressing it in a wholly Christian spirit and in angelic language. Male- 
branche is a Descartes who strays, having found divine wings, and lost 
all connexion with the earth." 



88 LECTURE FOURTH. 

formed minds must have been shocked by such a theory; 
but it is not just to confound Plato with his brilliant and 
unfaithful disciple. In Plato, sensibility directly attains 
sensible things ; it makes them known to us as they are, 
that is to say, as very imperfect and undergoing perpetual 
change, which renders the knowledge that we have of them 
almost unworthy of the name of knowledge. It is reason, 
different in us from sensibility, which, above sensible ob- 
jects, discovers to us the universal, the idea, and gives a 
knowledge solid and durable. Having once attained ideas, 
we have reached God himself, in whom they have their 
foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. 
But we have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to 
perceive sensible objects, which are defective and chang- 
ing; for this our senses are sufficient. Reason is distinct 
from the senses; it transcends the imperfect knowledge of 
what they are capable; it attains the universal, because it 
possesses something universal itself; it participates in the 
divine reason, but it is not the divine reason ; it is en- 
lightened by it, it comes from it, — it is not it. 

Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Des- 
cartes in the treatise, de VExistence de Dieu. The second 
part is entirely Cartesian in method, in the order, and 
sequence of the proofs. Nevertheless, Malebranche also 
appears there, especially in the fourth chapter, on the 
nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the metaphy- 
sical portions of the first part After the explanations 
which we have given, it will not be difficult for you to dis- 
cern what is true and what is at times excessive in the 
passages which follow: 1 — 

1 We use the only good edition of the treatise on the Existence of God, 
that which the Abbe" Gosselin has given in the collection of the Works of 
Fenelon. Versailles. 1820. See vol. i., p. 80. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 89 

Part i., chap. lii. " Oh ! how great is the mind of man ! 
It bears in itself what astonishes itself and infinitely 
surpasses itself. Its ideas are universal, eternal, and im- 
mutable. . . . The idea of the infinite is in me as well 
as that of lines, numbers, and circles. . . . — Chap. 
liv. Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal 
and immutable notions, which are the rule of all my 
judgments. I can judge of nothing except by consulting 
them, and it is not in my power to judge against what 
they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able 
to correct this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of 
me by this superior rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted 
to its decision. Whatever effort of mind I may make, I 
can never succeed in doubting that two and two are four; 
that the whole is not greater than any of its parts ; 
that the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from 
all points of the circumference. I am not at liberty to deny 
these propositions ; and if I deny these truths, or others 
similar to them, I have in me something that is above 
me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and 
immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am 
inclined to take it for myself; but it is above me since it 
corrects me, redresses me, and puts me in defiance against 
myself, and reminds me of my impotence. It is some- 
thing that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, 
and I am never deceived except in not listening to it. 
. . . Tit is internal rule is what I call my reason. . . . 
— Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me ; for I must 
continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the 
higher reason which corrects me when necessary, which I 
consult, exists not by me, and makes no part of me. This 
rule is perfect and immutable ; I am changing and imper- 



90 LECTURE FOURTH. 

feet. When I am deceived, it does not lose its integrity. 
When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its 
end : it is this which, without ever having deviated, has 
the authority over me to remind me of my error, and to 
make me return. It is a master within, which makes me 
keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me be- 
lieve, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknow- 
ledge my errors or confirm my judgments. Listening to 
it, I am instructed ; listening to myself, I err. This mas- 
ter is everywhere, and its voice makes itself heard, from 
end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in me. . . . 
— Chap. lvi. . . . That which appears the most in us 
and seems to be the foundation of ourselves, I mean our 
reason, is that which is least of all our own, which we are 
constrained to believe to be especially borrowed. We re- 
ceive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason 
superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, 
which is a foreign body. . . . — Chap. lvii. The internal 
and universal master always and everywhere speaks the 
same truths. We are not this master. It is true that we 
often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we 
are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not under- 
stand ourselves. We even fear to see that we are deceived, 
and we close the ear through fear of being humiliated by 
its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears being cor- 
rected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders 
in not following it, is not that perfect, universal, immuta- 
ble reason which corrects him in spite of himself. In all 
things we find, as it were, two principles within us. One 
gives, the other receives ; one wants, the other supplies ; 
one is deceived, the other corrects ; one goes wrong by its 
own inclination, the other rectifies it. , . . Each one feels 
within himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wan- 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 91 

ders when it escapes a complete subordination, which is cor- 
rected only by returning to the yoke of another supe- 
rior, universal, and immutable power. So everything in 
us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, bor- 
rowed reason, which needs another to correct it at every 
moment. All men are rational, because they possess the 
same reason which is communicated to them in different 
degrees. There is a certain number of wise men ; but the 
wisdom which they receive, as it were, from the fountain- 
head, which makes them what they are, is one and the 

same — Chap, lviii. Where is this wisdom? 

Where is this reason, which is both common and superior 
to all the limited and imperfect reasons of the human 
race? Where, then, is this oracle which is never silent, 
against which the vain prejudices of peoples are always 
impotent ? Where is this reason which we ever need to 
consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of 
listening to its voice ? Where is this light that lighteneth 
every man that cometh into the world ? . . . The substance 
of the human eye is not light ; on the contrary, the eye 
borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So 
my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and 
immutable truth, it is only the medium that conducts this 

original light, that is illuminated by it — Chap. lx. 

I find two reasons in myself, — one is myself, the other 
is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect, 
faulty, uncertain, pre-occupied, precipitate, subject to 
aberration, changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited ; in 
fine, it possesses nothing but what it borrows. The other 
is common to all men, and is superior to all ; it is perfect, 
eternal, immutable, always ready to communicate itself 
in all places, and to rectify all minds that are deceived, 
in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided, al- 



02 LECTURE FOURTH. 

though it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this 
perfect reason, that is so near me, and so different from me? 
Where is it? It must be something real. . . . Wherein 
this supreme reason ? Is it not God that I am seeking?" 
Part ii., chap, i., sect. 28. 1 "I have in me the idea 

of the infinite and of infinite perfection Give me 

a finite thing as great as you please — let it quite trans- 
cend the reach of my senses, so that it becomes, as it were, 
infinite to my imagination; it always remains finite in my 
mind ; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine 
it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it 
exists; and far from confounding it with the infinite, I 
conceive it as infinitely distant from the idea that I have 
of the veritable infinite. If one speaks to me of the inde- 
finite as a mean between the two extremes of the infinite 
and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at 
least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boun- 
daries escape the imagination without escaping the mind. 
.... Sect. 29. Where have I obtained this idea, wdiich 
is so much above me, which infinitely surpasses me, which 
astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own 
eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence 
does it come? Where have I obtained it? . . . Once more, 
whence comes this marvellous representation of the infinite, 
which pertains to the infinite itself, which resembles no- 
thing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it seems 
to me everything, and myself nothing. I can neither 
efface, obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; 
I have not put it there, I have found it there ; and I 
have found it there only because it was already there be- 
fore I sought it. It remains there invariable, even when 

1 Edit, de Versailles, p. 145. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 93 

I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I 
find it whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself 
when I am not seeking it. It does not depend upon me ; 
I depend upon it. . . . Moreover, who has made this infi- 
nite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to me? 
Has it made itself? Has the infinite image 1 of the infi- 
nite had no original, according to which it has been made, 
no real cause that has produced it? Where are we in re- 
lation to it? And what a mass of extravagances ! It is, 
therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that it is the 
infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately 
present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself 
is the idea which I have of him. . . " 

Chap, iv., sect. 49. ". . . My ideas are myself; for they 
are my reason. . . . My ideas, and the basis of myself, 
or of my mind, appear but the same thing. On the 
other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain, ignorant, 
subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed 
to believe what it does not clearly understand, and to 
judge without having sufficiently consulted its ideas, 
which are by themselves certain and immutable. My 
ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. 
What shall I believe, then, they can be? . . . What then! 
are my ideas God? They are superior to my mind, since 
they rectify and correct it; they have the character of the 
Divinity, for they are universal and immutable like God; 
they really subsist, according to a principle that we have 

1 It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the expressions, repre- 
sentation of the infinite, image of the infinite, especially infinite image of the 
infinite. We cannot represent to ourselves, we cannot image to ourselves 
the infinite. We conceive the infinite ; the infinite is not an object of the 
imagination, but of the understanding, of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., 
lecture 6, p. 223, 224. 



94? LECTURE FOURTH. 

already established : — nothing exists so really as that 
which is universal and immutable. If that which is 
changing, transitory, and derived, truly exists, much 
more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. 
It is then necessary to find in nature something existing 
and real, that is, my ideas, something that is within me, 
and is not myself, that is superior to me, that is in me 
even when I am not thinking of it, with which I believe 
myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself, in 
fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than 
my own foundation. I know not what this something, so 
admirable, so familiar, so unknown, can be, except God." 

Let us now hear the most solid, the most authorita- 
tive of the Christian doctors of the seventeenth century — 
let us hear Bossuet in his Logic, and in the Treatise on 
the Knowledge of God and Self} 

Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philo- 
sophy — St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He 
had been taught at the college of Navarre the doctrine 
of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified peripateticism; 
at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St. 
Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad 
the philosophy of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no 
difficulty in reconciling it with that of St. Augustine, 
while, upon more than one point, it corroborated the 
doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in 
philosophy; he received everything, but every thing united 
and purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which 
in him is a quality predominating over force, grandeur, 

1 By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned, we have 
here joined to the Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-me*me, so long 
known, the Logique, which was only published in 1828. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 95 

and eloquence. 1 In the passages wliich I am about to 
exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon your 
memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the 
exhaustless abundance of Fenelon ; you will find what is 
better than either, to wit, clearness and precision — all the 
rest in him is in some sort an addition to these. 

Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which 
conducts from ideas, from universal and necessary truths, 
to God. Bossuet renders to himself a strict account of 
this process, and marks it with force; it is the principle 
that we have invoked, that wliich concludes from attri- 
butes in a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in 
a legislator, from eternal verities in an eternal mind 
that comprehends them and eternally possesses them. 
Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself, inter- 
prets him and defends him in advance against those 
who would make Platonic ideas beings subsisting by 

1 4th Serie3, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of Pascal: "Bossuet, with 
more moderation, and supported by a good sense which nothing can shake, is, 
in his way, a disciple of the same doctrine, only the extremes of which, 
according to his custom, he shunned. This great mind, which may have 
superiors in invention, but has no equal for force in common sense, was 
very careful not to place revelation and philosophy in opposition to each 
other: he found it the safer and truer way to give to each its due, to bor- 
row from philosophy whatever natural light it can give, in order to increase 
it in turn with the supernatural light, of which the Church has been made 
the depositary. Tt is in this sovereign good sense, capable of comprehend- 
ing every thing, and uniting every thing, that resides the supreme origin- 
ality of Bossuet. He shunned particular opinions as small minds seek 
them for the triumph of self-love. He did not think of himself ; he only 
searched for truth^ and wherever he found it he listened to it, well assured 
that if the connexion between truths of different orders sometimes escapes 
us, it is no reason for closing the eyes to any truth. If we wished to give 
a scholastic name to Bossuet, according to the custom of the Middle Age, 
we would have to call him the infallible doctor. He is not only one of the 
highest, he is also one of the best and solidest intelligences that ever existed; 
and this great conciliator has easily reconciled religion and philosophy, St. 
Augustine and Descartes, tradition and reason." 



96 LECTURE FOURTH. 

themselves, whilst they really exist only in the mind of 
God. 

Logic, book i., chap, xxxvi. "When I consider a recti- 
lineal triangle as a figure bounded by three straight lines, 
and having three angles equal to two right angles, neither 
more nor less; and when I pass from this to an equila- 
teral triangle with its three sides and its three angles 
equal, whence it follows, that I consider each angle of 
this triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come 
again to consider a right-angled triangle, and what I 
clearly see in this idea, in connexion with the preceding- 
ideas, that the two angles of this triangle are necessarily 
acute, and that these two acute angles are exactly equal 
to one right angle, neither more nor less — I sec nothing 
contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas 
that represent to me these truths are eternal. Were 
there not in nature a single equilateral or right-angled 
triangle, or any triangle whatever, everything that I have 
just considered would remain always true and indubitable. 
In fact, I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral 
or rectilineal triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers 
could assure me that any human hand, however skilful, 
could ever make a line exactly straight, or sides and 
angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we 
should only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, 
but to see at a glance, that the lines which we trace devi- 
ate from straightness, and differ in length. We have 
never seen, then, any but imperfect images of equilateral, 
rectilineal, or isosoles triangles, since they neither exist 
in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, 
what we see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, 
independently of every existing triangle, is certain and 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 97 

indubitable. Place an understanding in any given time, 
or at any point in eternity, thus to speak, and it will see 
these truths equally manifest ; they are, therefore, eternal. 
Since the understanding does not give being to truth, but 
is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were 
every created understanding destined, these truths would 
immutably subsist. . . . " 

Chap, xxxvii. " Since there is nothing eternal, im- 
mutable, independent, but God alone, we must conclude 
that these truths do not subsist in themselves, but in God 
alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are nothing else 
than himself. 

'.' There are those who, in order to verify these eternal 
truths which we have proposed, and others of the same 
nature, have figured to themselves eternal essences aside 
from deity — a pure illusion, which comes from not under- 
standing that in God, as in the source of being, and in 
his understanding, where resides the art of making and 
ordering all things, are found primitive ideas, or as St. 
Augustine says, the eternally subsisting reasons of things. 
Thus, in the thought of the architect is the primitive 
idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this intel- 
lectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of 
houses built according to this interior model ; and if the 
architect were eternal, the idea and the reason of the 
house would also be eternal. But, without recurring to 
the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or 
rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immuta- 
ble thought of God, where all order, all measure, all rule, 
all proportion, all reason, in a word, all truth are found in 
their origin. 

" These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are 



/ 



98 LECTURE FOURTH. 

the true object of science ; and this is the reason why- 
Plato, in order to render us truly wise, continually re- 
minds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not what is 
formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, 
what appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but 
what eternally subsists. It is this intellectual world which 
that divine philosopher has put in the mind of God before 
the world was constructed, which is the immutable model of 
that great work. These are the simple, eternal, immuta- 
ble, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, 
in order to understand truth. This is what has made 
him say that our ideas, images of the divine ideas, were 
also immediately derived from the divine ideas, and did 
not come by the senses, which serve very well, said he, to 
awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if, 
without having ever seen anything eternal, we have so clear 
an idea of eternity, that is to say, of being that is always 
the same; if, without having perceived a perfect triangle, 
we understand it distinctly, and demonstrate so many in- 
contestable truths concerning it, it is a mark that these 
ideas do not come from our senses." 

Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self. 1 Chap, iv., 
sect. 5. Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which 
are nothing else than God himself, in whom they are always 
subsisting and perfectly understood. 

"... We have already remarked that the understand- 
ing has eternal verities for its object. The standards by 
which we measure all things are eternal and invariable. 

1 The bent, or, rathor, only good edition is that which was published 
from an authentic copy, in 184G, by Lecoffie. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 99 

We know clearly that every thing in the universe is made 
according to proportion, from the greatest to the least, 
from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well 
enough to understand that these proportions are related 
to the principles of eternal truth. All that is demon- 
strated in mathematics, and in any other science what- 
ever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the 
demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be other- 
wise than as it is demonstrated to be. So, in order to un- 
derstand the nature and the properties of things which 
I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a circle, 
or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, 
to each other, it is not necessary that I should find such 
in nature, and I may be sure that I have never traced, 
never seen, any that are perfect. Neither is it necessary 
that I should think that there is motion in the world in 
order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of 
the lines which every motion describes, and the hidden 
proportions according to which it is developed. When 
the idea of these things is once awakened in my mind, I 
know that, whether they have an actual existence or not, 
so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of 
another nature, or to be made in a different way. To 
come to something that concerns us more nearly, I mean 
by these principles of eternal truth, that they do not de- 
pend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of rea- 
soning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to 
reason, and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking 
the recognition of his maker, if in fault of searching for him, 
he should be ignorant of him. All these truths, and all 
those which I deduce from them by sure reasoning, sub- 
sist independently of all time. In whatever time I 



100 LECTURE FOURTH. 

place a human understanding, it will know them, hut in 
knowing them it will find them truths, it will not make 
them such, for our cognitions do not make their objects, 
but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all 
time, before the existence of a human understanding: and 
were every thing that is made according to the laws of 
proportion, that is to say, everything that I see in nature, 
destroyed except myself, these laws would be preserved 
in my thought, and I should clearly see that they would 
alwa} r s be good and always true, were I also destroyed 
with the rest. 

"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist 
eternal and immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow 
the existence of a being in whom truth is eternally sub- 
sisting, in whom it is always understood ; and this being 
must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him 
it is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and 
has understanding out of him. 

"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incom- 
prehensible 1 to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eter- 
nal truths; and to see them is to turn to him who is im- 
mutably all truth, and to receive his light. 

" This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eter- 
nally true, eternally truth itself. . . . It is in this eternal 
that these eternal truths subsist. It is also by this that 
I see them. All other men see them as well as myself, 
and we see them always the same, and as having existed 
before us. For we know that we have commenced, and 
we know that these truths have always been. Thus we 
see them in a light superior to ourselves, and it is in this 

1 These words, d'une certaine manidre qui rn'est incomprehensible, c'est en 
lui, dis-je, are not in the first edition of ] 722. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 101 

superior light that we see whether we act well or ill, that is 
to say, whether we act according to these constitutive prin- 
ciples of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with all 
other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see 
that there are things in regard to which duty is indispen- 
sable, and that in things which are naturally indifferent, 
the true duty is to accommodate ourselves to the greatest 
good of society. A w T ell-disposed man conforms to the 
civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to 
an inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he 
must do wrong to no one, that it is better to be injured 
than to injure. . . . The man who sees these truths, by 
these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when 
he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do 
nuc accommodate themselves to human judgments, but hu- 
man judgments are accommodated to them. And the man 
judges rightly when, feelingthese judgments to be variable in 
their nature, he gives them for a rule these eternal verities. 

" These eternal verities which every understanding 
always perceives the same, by which every understanding 
is governed, are something of God, or rather, are God 
himself. . . . 

"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, 
and man is to himself an indubitable proof of this. For, 
whether he considers himself or extends his vision to the 
beings that surround him, he sees every thing subjected to 
certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He sees 
that he understands these laws, at least in part,— he who 
has neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, 
however small, and he sees that nothing could have been 
made had not these laws been elsewhere perfectly under- 
stood ; and he sees that it is necessary to recognise an 



102 LECTURE FOURTH. 

eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion, 
have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose 
that there is so much sequence in truths, so much propor- 
tion in things, so much economy in their arrangement, 
that is to say, in the world, and that this sequence, this 
proportion, this economy, should nowhere be understood: — 
and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these 
things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that 
there is some one who knows them in their perfection, 
and that this is he who has made all things. . . *' 

Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates 
that the soul knows by the imperfection of its own in- 
telligence that there is elsewhere a perfect intelligence. 

In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of 
truth to God. 

" Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so 
pure, of truth? Whence come to it those immutable rules 
that govern reasoning, that form manners, by which it dis- 
covers the secret proportions of figures and of movements? 
Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which 
I have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, 
the circles, that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my 
mind their proportions and their relations? Or are there 
others whose perfect trueness produces this effect? Where 
have I seen these circles and these triangles so true, — I 
who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular 
figure, and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so 
perfectly? Are there somewhere, either in the world or 
out of the world, triangles or circles existing with this 
perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed upon 
my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and con- 
duct also exist in some place, whence they communicate 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 103 

to me their immutable truth ? Or, indeed, is it not rather 
he who has everywhere extended measure, proportion, truth 
itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of them? 
... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, 
made in the image of God, capable of understanding 
truth, which is God himself, actually turns towards its 
original, that is to say, towards God, where the truth 
appears to it as soon as God wills to make the truth 
appear to it. . . . It is an astonishing thing that man 
understands so many truths, without understanding at 
the same time that all truth comes from God, that it is in 
G od, that it is God himself. ... It is certain that God is 
the primitive reason of all that exists and has understand- 
ing in the universe ; that he is the true original, and that 
every thing is true by relation to his eternal idea, that 
seeking truth is seeking him, and that finding truth is 
finding him. . . ." 

Chap, v., sect. 14. " The senses do not convey to the soul 
knowledge of truth. They excite it, awaken it, and 
apprise it of certain effects : it is solicited to search for 
causes, but it discovers them, it sees their connexions, 
the principles which put them in motion, only in a supe- 
rior light that comes from God, or is God himself. God 
is, then, truth, which is always the same to all minds, and 
the true source of intelligence. For this reason intelli- 
gence beholds the light, breathes and lives." 

At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes 
to crown these great testimonies, and to complete their 
unanimity. 

Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, 
Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Idceis, in which 
Leibnitz declares that primary notions are the attributes of 



lOt LECTURE FOURTH. 

God. "I know not," he says, "whether man can per- 
fectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascend- 
ing to primary ideas for which he can no more account, 
that is to say, to the absolute attributes of God." 1 

The same doctrine is in the Principia Philosophic seu 
Theses in Gratiam Principis Eugenii. " The intelligence 
of God is the region of eternal truths, and the ideas that 
depend upon them." 2 

Theodicea, part ii., sect. 189. 3 " It must not be said with 
the Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were 
no understanding, not even that of God. For, in my 
opinion, it is the divine understanding that makes the 
reality of eternal truths." 

Nouveaux Essais sur V Entenclement Humain, book ii., 
chap. xvii. " The idea of the absolute is in us internally 
like that of being. These absolutes are nothing else than 
the attributes of God, and it may be said they are just as 
much the source of ideas as God is in himself the principle 
of beings." 

Ibid., book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded 
where those ideas would be if no mind existed, and what 
would then become of the real foundation of this certainty 
of eternal truths? That brings us in fine to the last foun- 
dation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal 
mind which cannot be destitute of existence, whose un- 
derstanding, to sj)eak truly, is the region of eternal truths, 
as St. Augustine saw and clearly enough expressed it. 
And that it may not be thought necessary to recur to 
it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain 

1 Leihnitzii Opera, edit. Deutens, vol. ii., p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 24. 
3 1st edition, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit, of M. de Jaucourt, Am- 
sterdam, 1747, vol. ii., p. 93. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 105 

the determinating reason and the regulative principle of 
existences themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the uni- 
verse. So these unnecessary truths, being anterior to the 
existences of contingent beings, must have their founda- 
tion in the existence of a necessary substance. It is there 
that I rind the original of truths which are stamped upon 
our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources, 
the application and occasions of which will produce actual 
enunciations." 

So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicans 
have thought that absolute truth is an attribute of abso- 
lute being. Truth is incomprehensible without God, as 
God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed, 
between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence, 
as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at 
the height of being, God is everywhere met, for truth is 
everywhere. Study nature, elevate yourselves to the laws 
that govern it and make of it as it were a living truth: — 
the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer 
you approach to God. Study, above all, humanity ; 
humanity is much greater than nature, for it comes from 
God as well as nature, and knows him, while nature is 
ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth, and 
refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The 
more you know of the truth, the more you know of God. 
The sciences, so far from turning us away from religion, 
conduct us to it. Physics, with their laws, mathematics, 
with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy, which can- 
not take a single step without encountering universal and 
necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to 
Deity, and, thus to speak, so many temples in which 
homage is perpetually paid to him. 



1 06 LECTURE FOURTH. 

But in the midst of these high considerations, let us 
carefully guard ourselves against two opposite errors, 
from which men of fine genius have not always known 
how to preserve themselves, — against the error of making 
the reason of man purely individual, and against the error 
of confounding it with truth and the divine reason. 1 
If the reason of man is purely individual because it is in 
the individual, it can comprehend nothing that is not in- 
dividual, nothing that transcends the limits wherein it is 
confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself to any 
universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to 
have any idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind 
from his birth can have no suspicion that a sun exists; but 
there is no power, not even that of Gfod, that by any means 
could make penetrate the reason of man any truth of that 
order absolutely repugnant to its nature ; since, for this 
end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our 

1 We have many times designated these two rocks, for example, 2nd 
Series, vol. i., lecture 5, p. 92 : — " One cannot help smiling when, in our 
times, he heai\3 individual reason spoken against. In truth it is a great 
waste of declamation, for the reason is not individual; if it were, we 
should govern it as we govern our resolutions and our volitions, we could at 
any moment change its acts, that is to say, our conceptions. If these con- 
ceptions were merely individual, we should not think of imposing them upon 
another individual, for to impose our own individual and personal concep- 
tions on another individual, on another person, would be the most extra- 
vagant despotism. . . . We call those mad who do not admit the relations 
of numbers, the difference between the beautiful and the ugly, the just and 
the unjust. Why ? Because we know that it is not the individual that 
constitutes these conceptions, or, in other terms, we know that the reason 
has something universal and absolute, that upon this ground it obligates all 
individuals; and an individual, at the same time that he knows that he him- 
self is obligated by it, knows that all others are obligated by it on the same 
ground." — Ibid., p. 93: "Truth misconceived is thereby neither altered 
nor destroyed; it subsists independently of the reason that perceives it or 
perceives it ill. Truth in itself is independent of our reason. Its true 
subject is the universal and absolute reason." 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 107 

mind ; it would be necessary to change it, to add to it an- 
other faculty. Neither, on the other hand, must we, with 
Malebranche, make the reason of man to such a degree 
impersonal that it takes the place of truth, which is 
its object, and of God who is its principle. It is truth 
that to us is absolutely impersonal, and not reason. 
Reason is in man, yet it comes from God. Hence it is 
individual and finite, whilst its root is in the infinite; 
it is personal by its relation to the person in which it re- 
sides, and must also possess I know not what character 
of universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable 
of conceiving universal and necessary truths ; hence it 
seems, by turns, according to the point of view from 
which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth is in 
some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally 
different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated 
reason, which is God himself. The truth in us is nothing 
else than our object; in God, it is one of his attributes, as 
well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we shall subsequently 
see. God exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks, and 
his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are re- 
flected in the laws of the universe, which the reason of 
man has received the power to attain. Truth is the off- 
spring, the utterance, I was about to say, the eternal word 
of God, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this divine 
language from that holy religion which teaches us to wor- 
ship God in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of 
Ideas, which manifest God to men, and remind them of 
him, had given to Plato the surname of the precursor; 
on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St. 
Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same 
theory, wisely interpreted, and purified by the light of 



10S LECTURE FOURTH. 

our age, that the new philosophy is attached to the tradi- 
tion of great philosophies, and to that of Christianity. 

The last problem that the science of the true presented 
is resolved: — we are in possession of the basis of absolute 
truths. God is substance, reason, supreme cause, and the 
unity of all these truths ; God, and God alone, is to us 
the boundary beyond which we have nothing more to seek. 



109 



LECTURE V. 

ON MYSTICISM. 

Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Mysti- 
cism consists in pretending to know God without an intermediary.-— 
Two sorts of mysticism. — Mysticism of sentiment. Theoiy of sensi- 
bility. Two sensibilities — the one external, the other internal, and 
corresponding to the soul as external sensibility corresponds to nature. — 
Legitimate part of sentiment. — Its aberrations.' — Philosophical mysticism. 
Plotinus : God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary 
by pure thought. --Ecstasy. — Mixture of superstition and abstraction in 
mysticism. — Conclusion of the first part of the course. 

"Whether we turn our attention to the forces and the 
laws that animate and govern matter without belonging 
to it, or as the order of our labours calls us to do, reflect 
upon the universal and necessary truths which our mind 
discovers but does not constitute, the least systematic use 
of reason makes us naturally conclude from the forces and 
laws of the universe that there is a first intelligent mover, 
and from necessary truths that there is a necessary being 
who alone is their substance. We do not perceive God, 
but we conceive him, upon the faith of this admirable 
world exposed to our view, and upon that of this other 
world, more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves. 
By this double road we succeed in going to God. This 
natural course is that of all men : — it must be sufficient 



110 LECTURE FIFTH. 

for a sound philosophy. But there are feeble and pre- 
sumptuous minds that do not know how to go thus far, 
or do not know how to stop there. Confined to experi- 
ence, they do not dare to conclude from what they see in 
what they do not see, as if at all times, at the sight of the 
first phenomenon that appears to their eyes, they did not 
admit that this phenomenon has a cause, even when this 
cause does not come within the reach of their senses. 
They do not perceive it, yet they believe in it, for the 
simple reason that they necessarily conceive it. Man and 
the universe are also facts that cannot but have a cause, 
although this cause may neither be seen by our eyes nor 
touched by our hands. Reason has been given us for the 
very purpose of going, and without any circuit of reason- 
ing, from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to 
the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and also, 
from necessary and universal truths, which surround us 
on every side, to their eternal and necessary principle. 
Snch is the natural and legitimate bearing of reason. It 
possesses an evidence of which it renders no account, and 
is not thereby less irresistible to whomsoever does not 
undertake to contest with God the veracity of the facul- 
ties which he has received. But one does not revolt 
against reason with impunity. It punishes our false 
wisdom by giving us up to extravagance. When one has 
confined himself to the narrow limits of what he directly 
perceives, he is smothered by these limits, wishes to go 
out of them at any price, and invokes some other means 
of knowing ; — he did not dare to admit the existence of 
an invisible God, and now behold him aspiring to enter 
into immediate communication with him, as with sensible 
objects, and the objects of consciousness. It is an ex- 



ON MYSTICISM. Ill 

treme feebleness for a rational being thus to doubt reason, 
and it is an incredible rashness, in this despair of intelli- 
gence, to dream of direct communication with God. This 
desperate and ambitious dream is mysticism. 

It behoves us to separate with care this chimera, that 
is not without danger, from the cause that we defend. It 
behoves us so much the more to openly break with mysti- 
cism, as it seems to touch us more nearly, as it pretends 
to be the last word of philosophy, and as by an appear- 
ance of greatness it is able to seduce many a noble soul, 
especially at one of those epochs of lassitude, when, after 
the cruel disappointment of excessive hopes, human 
reason, having lost faith in its own power without having 
lost the need of God, in order to satisfy this immortal 
need, addresses itself to every thing except itself, and in 
fault of knowing how to go to God by the way that is 
open to it, throws itself out of common sense, and tries 
the new, the chimerical, even the absurd, in order to attain 
the impossible. 

Mysticism contains a pusillanimous scepticism in the 
place of reason, and, at the same time, a faith blind and 
carried even to the oblivion of all the conditions imposed 
upon human nature. To conceive God under the trans- 
parent veil of the universe and above the highest truths, 
is at once too much and too little for mysticism. It does 
not believe that it knows God, if it knows him only in his 
manifestations and by the signs of his existence: it wishes 
to perceive him directly, it wishes to be united to him, 
sometimes by sentiment, sometimes by some other extra- 
ordinary process. 

Sentiment plays so important a part in mysticism, that 
our first care must be to investigate the nature and pro- 



1 1 2 LECTURE FIFTH. 

per function of this interesting and hitherto ill-studied 
part of human nature. 

It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sen- 
sation. There arc, in some sort, two sensibilities : — one 
is directed to the external world, and is charged with 
transmitting to the soul the impressions that it sees; the 
other is wholly interior, and is related to the soul as the 
other is to nature, — its function is to receive the impres- 
sion, and, as it were, the rebound of what passes in the 
soul. Have we discovered any truth? there is something 
in us which feels joy on account of it. Have we performed 
a good action? Ave receive our reward in a feeling of satis- 
faction less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than 
all the agreeable sensations that come from the body. It 
seems as if intelligence also had its intimate organ, which 
suffers or enjoys, according to the state of the intelligence. 
We bear in ourselves a profound source of emotion, at 
once physical and moral, which expresses the union of our 
two natures. The animal does not go beyond sensation, 
and pure thought belongs only to the angelic nature. 
The sentiment that partakes of sensation and thought is 
the portion of humanity. Sentiment is, it is true, only an 
echo of reason; but this echo is sometimes better under- 
stood than reason itself, because it resounds in the most 
intimate, the most delicate portions of the soul, and moves 
the entire man. 

It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as 
reason has conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, 
and loves it. Yes, the soul loves truth. It is a wonder- 
ful thing that a being strayed into one corner of the uni- 
verse, alone charged with sustaining himself against so 
many obstacles, who, it would seem, has enough to do to 



ON MYSTICISM. 113 

think of himself, to preserve and somewhat embellishing 
his life, is capable of loving what is not related to him, and 
exists only in an invisible world! This disinterested love 
of truth gives evidence of the greatness of him who feels it. 

Reason takes one step more : — it is not contented with 
truth, even absolute truth, when convinced that it pos- 
sesses it ill, that it does not possess it as it really is; 
as long as it has not placed it upon its eternal basis ; hav- 
ing arriving there, it stops as before its impassable bar- 
rier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to find. 
Sentiment follows reason, to which it is attached; it 
stops, it rests, only in the love of the infinite being. 

In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe 
that we are loving finite things, even while loving truth, 
beauty, virtue. And so surely is it the infinite itself that 
attracts and charms us, that its highest manifestations do 
not satisfy us until we have referred them to their immor- 
tal source. The heart is insatiable, because it aspires after 
the infinite. This sentiment, this need of the infinite, is 
at the foundation of the greatest passions, and the most 
trifling desires. A sigh of the soul in the presence of the 
starry heavens, the melancholy attached to the passion 
of glory, to ambition, to all the great emotions of the soul, 
express it better without doubt, but they do not express 
it more than the caprice and mobility of those vulgar 
loves, wandering from object to object in a perpetual 
circle of ardent desires, of poignant disquietudes, and 
mournful disenchantments. 

Let us designate another relation between reason and 
sentiment. 

The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object 
without rendering to itself an account of what it does, of 



114 LECTURE FIFTH. 

what it perceives, of what it feels. But, with the faculty 
of thinking, of feeling, it has also that of willing; it pos- 
sesses the liberty of returning to itself, of reflecting on its 
own thought and sentiment, of consenting to this, or of 
resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing its 
thought and sentiment, while stamping them with a new 
character. Spontaneity, reflection, — these are the two 
great forms of intelligence. 1 One is not the other; but, 
after all, the latter does little more than develop the for- 
mer; they contain at bottom the same things: — the point 
of view alone is different. Every thing that is spontaneous 
is obscure and confused; reflection carries with it a clear 
and distinct view. 

Reason does not begin by reflection ; it does not at first 
perceive the truth as universal and necessary ; conse- 
quently, when it passes from idea to being, when it refers 
truth to the real being that is its subject, it has not 
sounded, it even has no suspicion of the depth of the 
chasm it passes ; it passes it by means of the power 
which is in it, but it is not astonished at what it has done. 
It is subsequently astonished, and undertakes by the aid 
of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the oppo- 
site of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. 
Here commences the strife between sophism and common 
sense, between false science and natural truth, between 
good and bad philosophy, both of which come from free 
reflection. The sad and sublime privilege of reflection is 
error; but reflection is the remedy for the evil it produces. 
If it can deny natural truth, usually it confirms it, returns 
to common sense by a longer or shorter circuit; it op- 

1 See the preceding lectures. 



ON MYSTICISM. 115 

poses in vain all the tendencies of human nature, by which 
it is almost always overcome, and brought back submis- 
sive to the first inspirations of reason, fortified by this 
trial. But there is nothing more in the end than there 
was at the beginning; only in primitive inspiration there 
was a power which was ignorant of itself, and in the legi- 
timate results of reflection there is a power which knows 
itself : — one is the triumph of instinct, the other, that of 
true science. 

Sentiment which accompanies intelligence in all its 
proceedings presents the same phenomena. 

The heart, like reason, pursues the infinite, and the only 
difference there is in these pursuits is, that sometimes the 
heart seeks the infinite without knowing that it seeks it, 
and sometimes it renders to itself an account of the final end 
of the need of loving what disturbs it. When reflection isadd- 
ed to love, if it finds that the object loved is in fact worthy 
of being loved, far from enfeebling love, it strengthens it; 
far from clipping its divine wings, it develops them, and 
nourishes them, as Plato 1 says. But if the object of love is 
only a symbol of the true beauty, only capable of exciting 
the desire of the soul without satisfying it, reflection 
breaks the charm which held the heart, dissipates the 
chimera that enchained it. It must be very sure in re- 
gard to its attachments, in order to dare to put them to 
the proof of reflection. Psyche! Psyche! preserve thy 
good fortune ; do not sound the mystery too deeply. Take 
care not to bring the fearful light near the invisible lover 
with whom thy soul is enamoured. At the first ray of 
the fatal lamp love is awakened, and flies away. Charm- 

1 See the Phcedrw and the Banquet, vol. vii. of our translation. 



1 lb* LECTURE FIFTH. 

ing image of what takes place in the soul, when to the 
serene and unsuspecting confidence of sentiment succeeds 
reflection with its bitter train. This is perhaps also the 
meaning of the biblical account of the tree of know- 
ledge. 1 Before science and reflection are innocence and 
faith. Science and reflection at first engender doubt, 
disquietude, distaste for what one possesses, the disturbed 
pursuit of what one knows not, troubles of mind and soul, 
sore travail of thought, and, in life, many faults, until in- 
nocence, for ever lost, is replaced by virtue, simple faith 
by true science, until love, through so many vanishing- 
illusions, finally succeeds in reaching its true object. 

Spontaneous love has the native grace of ignorance and 
happiness. Reflective love is very different ; it is serious, 
it is great, even in its faults, with the greatness of liberty. 
Let us not be in haste to condemn reflection: if it often 
produces egotism, it also produces devotion. What, in fact, 
is self-devotion? It is giving ourselves freely, with full 
knowledge of what we are doing. Therein consists the 
sublimity of love, love worthy of a noble and generous 
creature, not an ignorant and blind love. When affection 
has conquered selfishness, instead of loving its object for 
its own sake, the soul gives itself to its object, and, miracle 
of love, the more it gives, the more it possesses, nourish- 
ing itself by its own sacrifices, and finding its strength 
and its joy in its entire self-abandonment. But there is 
only one being who is worthy of being thus loved, and 
who can be thus loved without illusions, and without mis- 
takes, at once without limits, and without regret, to wit, 

1 We shall not be accused of perverting the holy Scriptures by these 
analogies, for we give thera only as analogies, and St. Augustine and 
Bossuet are full of such. 



ON MYSTICISM. 117 

the perfect being who alone does not fear reflection, who 
alone can fill the entire capacity of our heart. 

Mysticism corrupts sentiment by exaggerating its power. 

Mysticism begins by suppressing in man reason, or, at 
least, it subordinates and sacrifices reason to sentiment. 

Listen to mysticism: it says that by the heart alone is 
man in relation with God. All that is great, beautiful, 
infinite, eternal, love alone reveals to us. Reason is only 
a lying faculty. Because it may err, and does err, it is 
said that it always errs. Reason is confounded with every 
ihing that it is not. The errors of the senses, and of 
reasoning, the illusions of the imagination, even the extra- 
vagancies of passion which sometimes give rise to those of 
mind, every thing is laid to the charge of reason. Its im- 
perfections are triumphed over, its miseries are compla- 
cently exhibited; the most audacious dogmatical system — 
since it aspires to put man and God in immediate com- 
munication — borrows against reason all the arms of scep- 
ticism. 

Mysticism goes farther: it attacks liberty itself; it or- 
ders liberty to renounce itself, in order to identify itself 
by love with him from whom the infinite separates us. 
The ideal of virtue is no longer the courageous perseve- 
rance of the good man, who, in struggling against temp- 
tation and suffering, makes life holy; it is no longer 
the free and enlightened devotion of a loving soul; it is 
the entire and blind abandonment of ourselves, of our 
will, of our being, in a barren contemplation of thought, 
in a prayer without utterance, and almost without con- 
sciousness. 

The source of mysticism is in that incomplete view of 
human nature, which knows not how to discern in it what 



m 



LECTURE FIFTH. 



therein is most profound, which betakes itself to what is 
therein most striking, most seizing, and, consequently, 
also most seizable. We have already said that reason is 
not noisy, and often is not heard, whilst its echo of senti- 
ment loudly resounds. In this compound phenomenon, 
it is natural that the most apparent element should cover 
and dim the most obscure. 

Moreover, what relations, what deceptive resemblances 
between these two faculties! "Without doubt, in their 
development, they manifestly differ; when reason becomes 
reasoning, one easily distinguishes its heavy movement 
from the flight of sentiment; but spontaneous reason is 
almost confounded with sentiment, — there is the same 
rapidity, the same obscurity. Add that they pursue the 
same object, and almost always go together. It is not, 
then, astonishing that they should be confounded. 

A wise philosophy distinguishes 1 them without sepa- 
rating them. Analysis demonstrates that reason precedes, 
and that sentiment follows. How can we love what we 
are ignorant of? In order to enjoy the truth, is it not 
necessary to know it more or less ? In order to be moved 
by certain ideas, is it not necessary to have possessed 
them in some degree? To absorb reason in sentiment is to 
stifle the cause in the effect. When one speaks of the light 
of the heart, he designates without knowing it that light of 
the spontaneous reason which discovers to us truth by a 
pure and immediate intuition entirely opposite to the 
slow and laborious processes of the reflective reason and 
reasoning. 

1 See part ii., TJie Beautiful, lecture 6, and part iii., lecture 13, on the 
Morals of Sentiment. See also our Pascal, preface of the last edition, p. 8, 
etc., vol. i. of the 4th Series. 



ON MYSTICISM. 119 

Sentiment by itself is a source of emotion, not of know- 
ledge. The sole faculty of knowledge is reason. At bot- 
tom, if sentiment is different from sensation, it neverthe- 
less pertains on all sides to general sensibility, and it is, 
like it, variable ; it has, like it, its interruptions, its 
vivacity, and its lassitude, its exaltation and its short- 
comings. The inspirations of sentiment, then, which are 
essentially mobile and individual, cannot be raised to a 
universal and absolute rule. It is not so with reason ; it is 
constantly the same in each one of us, the same in all men. 
The laws that govern its exercise constitute the common 
legislation of all intelligent beings. There is no intelli- 
gence that does not conceive some universal and necessary 
truth, and, consequently, the infinite being who is its 
principle. These grand objects being once known ex- 
cite in the souls of all men the emotions that we have en- 
deavoured to describe. These emotions partake of the 
dignity of reason and the mobility of imagination and 
sensibility. Sentiment is the harmonious and living rela- 
tion between reason and sensibility. Suppress one of the 
two terms, and what becomes of the relation? Mysti- 
cism pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does 
not see that in depriving reason of its power, it really 
deprives him of that which makes him know God and puts 
him in a just communication with God by the intermediary 
of eternal and infinite truth. 

The fundamental error of mysticism is, that it discards 
this intermediary as if it were a barrier and not a tie : it 
makes the infinite being the direct object of love. But 
such a love can be sustained only by superhuman efforts that 
end in folly. Love tends to unite itself with its object : 
mysticism absorbs love in its object. Hence the extrava- 



120 LECTURE FIFTH. 

t 

gances of that mysticism so severely and so justly con- 
demned by Bossuet and the Church in quietism. 1 Quietism 
lulls to sleep the activity of man, extinguishes his intelli- 
gence, substitutes indolent and irregular contemplation for 
the seeking of truth and the fulfilment of duty. The true 
union of the soul with God is made by truth and virtue. 
Every other union is a chimera, a peril, sometimes a crime. 
It is not permitted man to reject, under any pretext, 
that which makes him man, that which renders him 
capable of comprehending God and expressing in himself 
an imperfect image of God, that is to say, reason, liberty, 
conscience. Without doubt, virtue lias its prudence, and if 
we must never yield to passion, there are diverse ways of 
combatting it in order to conquer it. One can let it sub- 
side, and resignation and silence may have their legitimate 
employment. There is a portion of truth, of utility even, 
in the Spiritual Letters, even in the Maxims of the Saints. 
But, in general, it is unsafe to anticipate in this world the 
prerogatives of death, and to dream of sanctity when 
virtue alone is required of us, when virtue is so difficult 
to attain, even imperfectly. The best quietism can, at 
most, be only a halt in the course, a truce in the strife, or 
rather another manner of combatting. It is not by flight 
that battles are gained; in order to gain them, it is necessary 
to come to an engagement, so much the more as duty con- 
sists in combatting still more than in conquering. Of the 
two opposite extremes — stoicism and quietism — the first, 
taken all in all, is preferable to the second ; for if it does 
not always elevate man to God, it maintains, at least, 
human personality, liberty, conscience, whilst quietism, in 
abolishing these, abolishes the entire man. Oblivion of 

1 See the admirable work of Bossuet, Instruction $ur les 6tals d'Oranon. 



ON MVSTICISM. J 21 

life and its duties, inertness, sloth, death of soul, — such 
are the fruits of that love of God, which is lost in the 
sterile contemplation of its object, provided it does not 
cause still sadder aberrations! There comes a moment 
when the soul that believes itself united with God, puffed 
up with this imaginary possession, despises both the body 
and human personality to such an extent that all its 
actions become indifferent to it, and good and evil are in 
its eyes the same. Thus it is that fanatical sects have 
been seen mingling crime and devotion, finding in one the 
excuse, often even the motive, of the other, and prefacing 
infamous irregularities or abominable cruelties with mys^ 
tic transports, — deplorable consequences of the chimera of 
pure love, of the pretension of sentiment to rule over rear 
son, to serve alone as a guide to the human soul, and to 
put itself in direct communication with God, without the 
intermediary of the visible world, and without the still 
surer intermediary of intelligence and truth. 

But it is time to pass to another kind of mysticism, 
more singular, more learned, more refined, and quite as 
unreasonable, although it presents itself in the very 
name of reason. 

We have seen 1 that reason, if one of the principles 
which govern it be destroyed, cannot lay hold of truth, 
not even absolute truths of the intellectual and moral 
order ; it refers all universal, necessary, absolute truths, to 
the being that alone can explain them, because in him 
alone are necessary and absolute existence, immutability, 
and infinity. God is the substance of uncreated truths, 
as he is the cause of created existences. Necessary truths 
find in God their natural subject. If God has not arbitra- 

1 Lecture 4. 



122 LECTURE FIFTH. 

rily made them, — which is not in accordance with their es- 
sence and his, — he constitutes them, in as much as they are 
himself. His intelligence possesses them as the manifesta- 
tions of itself. As long as our intelligence has not referred 
them to the divine intelligence, they are to it an effect 
without cause, a phenomenon without substance. It refers 
them, then, to their cause and their substance. And in that 
it obeys an imperative need, a fixed principle of reason. 

Mysticism breaks in some sort the ladder that elevates 
us to infinite substance : it regards this substance alone, 
independently 1 of the truth that manifests it, and it ima- 
gines itself to possess also the pure absolute, pure unity, 
being in itself. The advantage which mysticism here 
seeks, is to give to thought an object wherein there is no 
mixture, no division, no multiplicity, wherein every sen- 
sible and human element has entirely disappeared. But 
in order to obtain this advantage, it must pay the cost of 
it. It is a very simple means of freeing theodicea from 
every shade of anthropomorphism; it is reducing God to 
an abstraction, to the abstraction of being in itself. Being 

1 See especially in our writings the regular and detailed refutation of the 
double extravagance of considering substance apart from its determinations 
and its qualities, or of considering its qualities and its faculties apart from 
the being that possesses them. 1st Series, vol. hi., lecture 3, On Condillac, 
and vol. v., lectures 5 and 6, On Kant. We say, the same Series, vol. iv., 
p. 56: "There are philosophers beyond the Rhine who, to appear very 
profound, are not contented with qualities and phenomena, and aspire to 
pure substance, to being in itself. The problem stated as follows, is quite 
insoluble : the knowledge of such a substance is impossible, for this very 
simple reason, that such a substance does not exist. Being in itself, das 
Ding in sich, which Kant seeks, escapes him, and this does not humiliate 
Kant and philosophy; for there is no being in itself. The human mind 
may form to itself an abstract and general idea of being, but this idea has 
no real object in nature. All being is determinate, if it is real, and to be 
determinate is to possess certain modes of being, transitory and accidental, 
or constant and essential. Knowledge of being in itself is then not merely 



ON MYSTICISM. 123 

in itself, it is true, is free from all division, but upon 
the condition that it have no attribute, no quality, and 
even that it be deprived of knowledge and intelligence; 
for intelligence, if elevated as it might be, always sup- 
poses the distinction between the intelligent subject and 
the intelligible object. A God from whom absolute unity 
excludes intelligence, is the God of the mystic philosophy. 

How could the school of Alexandria, how could Plotinus, 
its founder, 1 in the midst of the lights of the Greek and 
Latin civilization, have arrived at such a strange notion 
of the Divinity? By the abuse of Platonism, by the cor- 
ruption of the best and severest method, that of Socrates 
and Plato. 

The Platonic method, the dialectic process, as its author 
calls it, searches in particular, variable, contingent things, 
for what they also have general, durable, one, that is to 
say, their Idea, and is thus elevated to Ideas, as to the 
only true objects of intelligence, in order to be elevated 
still from these Ideas, which are arranged in an admirable 
hierarchy, to the first of all, beyond which intelligence 

interdicted to the human mind; it is contrary to the nature of things. At 
the other extreme of metaphysics is a powerless psychology, which, by 
fear of a hollow ontology, is condemned to voluntary ignorance. We are 
not able, say these philosophers, Mr. Dugald Stewart, for example, to 
attain being in itself ; it is permitted vis to know only phenomena and 
qualities ; so that, in order not to wander in search of the substance of the 
soul, they do not dare affirm its spirituality, and devote themselves to the 
study of its different faculties. Equal error, equal chimera ! There are 
no more qualities without being, than being without qualities. No being 
ia without its determinations, and reciprocally its determinations are not with- 
out it. To consider the determinations of being independently of the being 
which possesses them, is no longer to observe; it is to abstract, to make an 
abstraction quite as extravagant as that of being considered independently 
of its qualities." 

1 On the school of Alexandria, see 2nd Series, vol. ii., klcetch of a General 
Hutory of Philosophy, lecture 8, p. 211, and 3rd Series, vol. i., passim. 



P24 LECTURE FIFTH. 

has nothing more to conceive, nothing more to seek. Bv 
rejecting in finite things their limit, their individuality, 
we attain genera, Ideas, and, by them, their sovereign 
principle. But this principle is not the last of genera, 
nor the last of abstractions; it is a real and substantial 
principle. 1 The God of Plato is not called merely unity, 
he is called the Good ; he is not tlie lifeless substance of 
the Eleatics; 2 he is endowed with life and movement ; 3 
strong expressions that show how much the God of the 
Platonic metaphysics differs from that of mysticism. This 
God is the father of the world} He is also the father of 
truth, that light of spirits. 5 He dwells in the midst of 
Ideas which make him a true God in as much as he is ivith 
them. 6 He possesses august and holy intelligence. 1 He 
has made the world without any external necessity, and 

1 See the previous lecture. 

2 3rd Series, vol. i. ; Ancient Philosophy, article Xenophanes and article 
Zeno. 

3 The Sophist, vol. xi. of our translation, p. 261. 

4 Timceus, vol. xii., p. 117. 

3 Republic, book vii., p. 70 of vol. x. 

6 Phcedr-us, vol. vi., p. 65. 

7 The Sophist, p. 261, 262. The following little-known and decisive 
passage, which we have translated for the first time, must be cited : — 
" Strange?'. But what, by Zeus ! shall we be so easily persuaded 
that in reality, motion, life, soul, intelligence, do not belong to absolute 
being ? that this being neither lives nor thinks, that this being remains im- 
mobile, immutable, without having part in august and holy intelligence? — 
Theatetus. That would be consenting, dear Eleatus, to a very strange 
assertion. — Stranger. Or indeed, shall we accord to this being intelligence 
while we refuse him life ? — Theatetus. That cannot be. — Stranger. Or, 
again, shall we say that there is in him intelligence and life, but that it 
is not in a soul that he possesses them? — Theatetus. And how could he 
possess them otherwise ? — Stranger. In fine, that, endowed with intelli- 
gence, soul and life, all animated as he is, he remains incomplete immobi- 
lity ?— TJceatetus. All that seems to me unreasonable." 



ON MYSTICISM. 125 

for the sole reason that he is good. 1 In fine, he is beauty 
without mixture, unalterable, immortal, that makes him 
who has caught a glimpse of it disdain all earthly beauties. 2 
The beautiful, the absolute good, is too dazzling to be 
looked on directly by the eye of mortal ; it must at first 
be contemplated in the images that reveal it to us, in 
truth, in beauty, in justice, as they are met here below, 
and among men, as the eye of one who has been a chained 
captive from infancy, must be gradually habituated to the 
light of the sun. 3 Our reason, enlightened by true science, 
can perceive this light of spirits; reason rightly led can 
go to God, and there is no need, in order to reach him, of 
a particular and mysterious faculty. 

Plotinus erred by pushing to excess the Platonic dia- 
lectics, and by extending them beyond the boundary 
where they should stop. In Plato they terminate at 
ideas, at the idea of the good, and produce an intelligent 
and good God; Plotinus applies them without limit, and 
they lead him into an abyss of mysticism. If all truth is 
in the general, and if all individuality is imperfection, it 
follows, that as long as we are able to generalize, as long 
as it is possible for us to overlook any difference, to ex- 
clude any determination, we shall not be at the limit of 
dialectics. Its last object, then, will be a principle with- 
out any determination. It will not spare in God being 
itself. In fact, if we say that God is a being, by the side 
of and above being, we place unity, of which being par- 

1 Timceus, p. 119 : "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme 
ordainer to produce and compose this universe was, that he was good." 

2 Bouquet, discourse of Diotimus, vol. vi., and the 2nd part of this vol., 
The Beautiful, lecture 7. 

3 Republic, ibid. 



126 LECTURE FIFTH. 

takes, and which it cannot disengage, in order to consider 
it alone. Being is not here simple, since it is at once 
being and unity: unity alone is simple, for one cannot go 
beyond that. And still when we say unity, we determine 
it. True absolute unity must, then, be something abso- 
lutely indeterminate, which is not, which, properly speak- 
ing, cannot be named, the unnameable, as Plotinus says. 
This principle, which exists not, for a still stronger reason, 
cannot think, for all thought is still a determination, a man- 
ner of being. So being and thought are excluded from 
absolute unity. If Alexandrianism admits them, it is only as 
a forfeiture, a degradation of unity. Considered in thought, 
and in being, the supreme principle is inferior to itself ; 
only in the pure simplicity of its indefinable essence is it 
the last object of science, and the last term of perfection. 
In order to enter into communication with such 
a God, the ordinary faculties are not sufficient, and the 
theodicea of the school of Alexandria imposes upon it a 
quite peculiar psychology. 

In the truth of things, reason conceives absolute unity 
as an attribute of absolute being, but not as something in 
itself, or, if it considers it apart, it knows that it considers 
only an abstraction. Does one wish to make absolute 
unity something else than an attribute of an absolute 
being, or an abstraction, a conception of human intelli- 
gence ? Reason could accept nothing more on any con- 
dition. Will this barren unity be the object of love? But 
love, much more than reason, aspires after a real object. 
One does not love substance in general, but a substance 
that possesses such or such a character. In human friend- 
ships, suppress all the qualities of a person, or modify 
them, and you modify or suppress the love. This does 



ON MYSTICISM. 1 27 

not prove that you do not love this person; it only proves 
that the person is not for you without his qualities. 

So neither reason nor love can attain the absolute unity 
of mysticism. In order to correspond to such an object, 
there must be in us something analogous to it, there must 
be a mode of knowing that implies the abolition of con- 
sciousness. In fact, consciousness is the sign of the me, 
that is to say, of that which is most determinate : the 
being who says, me, distinguishes himself essentially from 
every other; that is for us the type itself of individuality. 
Consciousness should degrade the ideal of dialectic know- 
ledge, or every division, every determination must be 
wanting, in order to respond to the absolute unity of its 
object. This mode of pure and direct communication with 
Grod, which is not reason, which is not love, which excludes 
consciousness, is ecstasy (%xrati&)\ This word, which Plo- 
tinus first applied to this singular state of the soul expres- 
ses this separation from ourselves which mysticism exacts, 
and of which it believes man capable. Man, in order to 
communicate with absolute being, must go out of himself. 
It is necessary that thought should reject all determinate 
thought, and, in falling back within its own depths, 
should arrive at such an oblivion of itself, that conscious- 
ness should vanish or seem to vanish. But that is only 
an image of ecstasy; what it is in itself, no one knows; 
as it escapes all consciousness, it escapes memory, escapes 
reflection, and consequently all expression, all human 
speech. 

This philosophical mysticism rests upon a radically false 
notion of absolute being. By dint of wishing to free God 
from all the conditions of finite existence, one comes to 
deprive him of all the conditions of existence itself; one 



12S LECTURE FIFTH. 

has such a fear that the infinite may have something in 
common with the finite, that he docs not dare to recognise 
that being is common to both, save difference of degree, 
as if all that is not were not nothingness itself! Absolute 
being possesses absolute unity without any doubt, as it 
possesses absolute intelligence ; but, once more, abso- 
lute unity without a real subject of inherence is desti- 
tute of all reality. Real and determinate are synonyms. 
What constitutes a being is its special nature, its essence. 
A being is itself only on the condition of not being an- 
other ; it cannot but have characteristic traits. All that 
is, is such or such. Difference is an element as essential 
to being as unity itself. If, then, reality is in determi- 
nation, it follows that God is the most determinate of 
beings. Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, 
when he says that God is the thought of thought, 1 that he 
is not a simple power, but a power effectively acting, 
meaning thereby that God, to be perfect, ought to have 
nothing in himself that is not completed. To finite nature 
it belongs to be, in a certain sense, indeterminate, since 
being finite, it has always in itself powers that are not 
realized; this indetermination diminishes as these powers 
are realized. So true divine unity is not abstract unity, 
it is the precise unity of perfect being in which every 
thing is accomplished. At the summit of existence, still 
more than at its low degree, every thing is determinate, 
everything is developed, every thing is distinct, every thing- 
is one. The richness of determinations is a certain sign 
of the plenitude of being. Reflection distinguishes these 
determinations from each other, but it is not necessary 

1 Book xii. of the Metaphysics. De la Netaphysique d'Aristotlc, 2nd 
edition* p. 200, etc. 



ON MYSTICISM. 129 

that it should in these distinctions see the limits. In us, 
for example, does the diversity of our faculties and their 
richest development divide the me and alter the identity 
and the unity of the person? Does each one of us believe 
himself less than himself, because he possesses sensibility, 
reason, and will? No, surely. It is the same with God. 
Not having employed a sufficient psychology, Alexandrian 
mysticism imagined that diversity of attributes is incom- 
patible with simplicity of essence, and through fear of cor- 
rupting simple and pure essence, it made of it an abstrac- 
tion. By a senseless scruple, it feared that God would 
not be sufficiently perfect, if it left him all his perfections ; 
it regards them as imperfections, being as a degradation, 
creation as a fall ; and, in order to explain man and the 
universe, it is forced to put in God Avhat it calls failings, 
not having seen that these pretended failings are the very 
signs of his infinite perfection. 

The theory of ecstasy is at once the necessary condi- 
tion and the condemnation of the theory of absolute unity. 
Without absolute unity as the direct object of knowledge, 
of what use is ecstasy in the subject of knowledge? 
Ecstasy, far from elevating man to God, abases him below 
man; for it effaces in him thought, by taking away its con- 
dition, which is consciousness. To suppress consciousness, 
is to render all knowledge impossible; it is not to com- 
prehend the perfection of this mode of knowing, wherein 
the limitation of subject and object gives at once the sim- 
plest, most immediate, and most determinate knowledge. 1 

1 On this fundamental point, see lecture 3, in this vol. — 2nd Series, 
vol. i., lecture o, p. 97. " The peculiarity of intelligence is not the power 
of knowing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is there intelligence 
for us ? It is not enough that there should be in us a principle of intelli- 
gence ; this principle must be developed and exercised, and take itself as 



130 LECTURE FIFTH. 

The Alexandrian mysticism is the most learned and 
the profoundest of all known mysticisms. In the heights 
of abstraction where it loses itself, it seems very far 
from popular superstitions; and yet the school of Alexan- 
dria unites ecstatic contemplation and theurgy. These 
are two things, in appearance, incompatible, but they 
pertain to the same principle, to the pretension of directly 
perceiving what inevitably escapes all our efforts. On 
the one hand, a refined mysticism aspires to God by 
ecstasy; on the other, a gross mysticism thinks to seize 
him by the senses. The processes, the faculties employed, 
differ, but the foundation is the same, and from this 
common foundation necessarily spring the most opposite 
extravagances. Apollonius of Tyanus is a popular Alex- 
andrianist, and Jamblicus is Plotinus become a priest, 
mystagogue, and hierophant. A new worship shone forth 
by miracles; the ancient worship would have its own 
miracles, and philosophers boasted that they could make 
the divinity appear before other men. They had demons 
for themselves, and, in some sort, for their own orders ; 
the gods were not only invoked, but evoked. Ecstasy for 
the initiates, theurgy for the crowd. 

At all times and in all places, these two mysticisms 
have given each other the hand. In India and in China, 
the schools where the most subtile idealism is taught, are 

the object of its intelligence. The necessary condition of intelligence is con- 
sciousness — that is to say, difference. There can be consciousness only 
where there are severel terms, one of which perceives the other, and at 
the same time perceives itself. That is knowing, and knowing self; that 
is intelligence. Intelligence without consciousness is the abstract possi- 
bility of intelligence, it is not real intelligence. Transfer this from human 
intelligence to divine intelligence, that is to say, refer ideas, I mean ideas 
in the sense of Plato, of St. Augustine, of Bossuet, of Leibnitz, to the only 
intelligence to which they can belong, and you will have, if I may thus ex- 
press myself, the life of the divine intelligence . . . , etc." 



ON MYSTICISM. 



131 



not far from pagodas of the most abject idolatry. One 
day the Bhagavad-Gita or Lao-tseu 1 is read, an indefin- 
able God is taught, without essential and determinate at- 
tributes ; the next day there is shown to the people such 
or such a form, such or such a manifestation of this God, 
who, not having a form that belongs to him, can receive 
all forms, and being only substance in itself, is neces- 
sarily the substance of every thing, of a stone and a drop 
of water, of a dog, a hero, and a sage. So, in the ancient 
world under Julien, for example, the same man was at 
once professor in the school of Athens and guardian of 
the temple of Minerva or Cybele, by turns obscuring the 
Timceus and the Republic by subtile commentaries, and 
exhibiting to the eyes of the multitude sometimes the 
sacred vale, 2 sometimes the shrine of the good goddess,* 
and in either function, as priest or philosopher, imposing 
on others and himself, undertaking to ascend above the 
human mind and falling miserably below it, paying in 
some sort the penalty of an unintelligible metaphysics, 
in lending himself to the most shameless superstitions. 

When the Christian religion triumphed, it brought 
humanity under a discipline that puts a rein upon this 
deplorable mysticism. But how many times has it brought 
back, under the reign of spiritual religion, all the extra- 
vagances of the religions of nature! It was to appear 
especially at the renaissance of the schools and of the 
genius of Paganism in the sixteenth century, when the 
human mind had broken with the philosophy of the Mid- 
dle Age, without yet having arrived at modern philo- 

1 Vol. ii. of the 2nd Series, Sketch of a General History of Philosophy, 
lectures 5 and 6, On t/ie Indian Philosojjhy, 

3 See the Fufhyphron, vol. i. of our translation. 
3 Lucien, Apuleius, Lucius of Patras, 



l')2 LECTURE FIFTH. 

sophy. 1 Tlie Paracelsuses and the Von Helmonts renewed 
the Apolloniuses and the Jamblicuses, abusing some chem- 
ical and medical knowledge, as the former had abused the 
Socratic and Platonic method, altered in its character, and 
turned from its true object. And so, in the midst of the 
eighteenth century, has not Swedenborg united in his own 
person an exalted mysticism and a sort of magic, opening 
thus the way to those senseless 2 persons who contest with 
me in the morning the solidest and best-established proofs 
of the existence of the soul and God, and propose to me in 
the evening to make me see otherwise than with my eyes, 
and to make me hear otherwise than with my ears, to 
make me use all my faculties otherwise than by their 
natural organs, promising me a superhuman science, on 
the condition of first losing consciousness, thought, 
liberty, memory, all that constitutes me an intelligent and 
moral being. I should know all then, but at the cost of 
knowing nothing that I should know. I should elevate 
myself to a marvellous world, which, awakened and in a 
natural state, I am not even able to suspect, of which no 
remembrance will remain to me : — a mysticism at once 
gross and chimerical, which perverts both psychology and 
physiology; an imbecile ecstasy, renewed without genius 
from the Alexandrine ecstasy; an extravagance which 
has not even the merit of a little novelty, and which his- 

1 2nd Series, vol. ii., Sketch of a General History of Philosophy, lecture 
10, On the Philosophy of the I&naissance. 

2 One was then ardently occupied with magnetism, and more than amag- 
netizer, half a materialist, half a visionary, pretended to convert us to a 
system of perfect clairvoyance of soul, obtained by means of artificial sleep. 
Alas! the same follies are now renewed. Conjunctions are the fashion. 
Spirits are interrogated, and they respond! Only let there be. conscious 
nesa that one does not interrogate, and superstition alone counterpoises 
scepticism. 



ON MYSTICISM. 133 

tory lias seen re-appearing at all epochs of ambition and 
impotence. 

This is what we come to when we wish to go beyond 
the conditions imposed upon human nature. Charron 
first said, and after him Pascal repeated it, that whoever 
would become an angel becomes a beast. The remedy 
for all these follies is a severe theory of reason, of what it 
can and what it cannot do ; of reason enveloped first in 
the exercise of the senses, then elevating itself to uni- 
versal and necessary ideas, referring them to their prin- 
ciple, to a being infinite and at the same time real and 
substantial, whose existence it conceives, but whose 
nature it is always interdicted to penetrate and compre- 
hend. Sentiment accompanies and vivifies the sublime 
intuitions of reason, but we must not confound these two 
orders of facts, much less smother reason in sentiment. 
Between a finite being like man and God, absolute and 
infinite substance, there is the double intermediary of 
that magnificent universe open to our gaze, and of those 
marvellous truths which reason conceives, but has not 
made more than the eye makes the beauties it perceives. 
The only means that is given us of elevating ourselves to 
the Being of beings, without being dazzled and bewil- 
dered, is to approach him by the aid of a divine inter- 
mediary ; that is to say, to consecrate ourselves to the 
study and the love of truth, and, as we shall soon see, to 
the contemplation and reproduction of the beautiful, 
especially to the practice of the good. 



134 



PART SECOND. 



THE BEAUTIFUL. 

LECTURE VI 

THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 

The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art is, as in 
the investigation of the true, to commence by psychology. Faculties of 
the soul that unite in the perception of the beautiful. — The senses give 
only the agreeable ; reason alone gives the idea of the beautiful. — Refu- 
tation of empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful. — 
Pre-eminence of reason. -Sentiment of the beautiful ; different from 
sensation and desire. — Distinction between the sentiment of the beau- 
tiful and that of the sublime. — Imagination. — Influence of sentiment on 
imagination.-- -Influence of imagination on sentiment. — Theory of taste. 

Let us recall in a few words the results at which we 
have arrived. 

Two exclusive schools are opposed to each other in the 
eighteenth century ; we have combatted both, and each 
by the other. To empiricism we have opposed the insuf- 
ficiency of sensation, and its own inevitable necessity to 
idealism. We have admitted, with Locke and Condillac, 
in regard to the origin of knowledge, particular and con- 
tingent ideas, which we owe to the senses and conscious- 
ness ; and above the senses and consciousness, the direct 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 135 

sources of all particular ideas, we have recognised, with 
Reid and Kant, a special faculty, different from sensation 
and consciousness, but developed with them, — reason, the 
lofty source of universal and necessary truths. We have 
established, against -Kant, the absolute authority of rea- 
son, and the truths which it discovers. Then, the truths 
that reason revealed to us have themselves revealed to us 
their eternal principle, — God. Finally, this rational 
spiritualism, which is both the faith of the human race 
and the doctrine of the greatest minds of antiquity and 
modern times, we have carefully distinguished from a 
chimerical and dangerous mysticism. Thus the necessity 
of experience and the necessity of reason, the necessity of 
a real and infinite being which is the first and last foun- 
dation of truth, a severe distinction between spiritualism 
and mysticism, are the great principles which we have 
been able to gather from the first part of this course. 

The second part, the study of the beautiful, will give 
us the same results elucidated and aggrandized by a new 
application. 

It was the eighteenth century that introduced, or ra- 
ther brought back into philosophy, investigations on the 
beautiful and art, so familiar to Plato and Aristotle, but 
which scholasticism had not entertained, to which our 
great philosophy of the seventeenth century had remained 
almost a stranger. 1 One comprehends that it did not belong 
to the empirical school to revive this noble part of philo- 
sophic science. Locke and Condillac did not leave a 
chapter, not even a single page, on the beautiful. Their 

1 Except the estimable Essay on the Beautiful, by P. Andre*, a disciple 
of Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged into the eighteenth 
century. On P. Andre*, see 3rd Series, vol. iii., Modem Philosophy, 
p. 207,' 516. 



136 LECTURE SIXTH. 

followers treated beauty with the same disdain , not 
knowing very well how to explain it in their system, they 
found it more convenient not to perceive it at all. Di- 
derot, it is true, had an enthusiasm for beauty and art, 
but enthusiasm was never so ill placed. Diderot had 
genius ; but, as Voltaire said of him, his was a head 
in which every thing fermented without coming to 
maturity. He scattered here and there a mass of ingenious 
and often contradictory perceptions; he has no principles; 
he abandons himself to the impression of the moment ; he 
knows not what the ideal is ; he delights in a kind of 
nature, at once common and mannered, such as one might 
expect from the author of the Interpretation de la Nature, 
the Tire de Famile, the Neveu de Rameau, and Jacques 
le Fataliste. Diderot is a fatalist in art as well as in 
philosophy ; he belongs to his times and his school, with 
a grain of poetry, sensibility, and imagination. 1 It was 
worthy of the Scotch 2 school and Kant 3 to give a place to 
the beautiful in their doctrine. They considered it in the 
soul and in nature ; but they did not even touch the diffi- 
cult question of the reproduction of the beautiful by the 
genius of man. We will try to embrace this great subject 
in its whole extent, and we are about to oifer at least a 
sketch of a regular and complete theory of beauty and art. 

Let us begin by establishing well the method that must 
preside over these investigations. 

One can study the beautiful in two ways: — either out of 

1 See, in the works of Diderot, Pensecs sur la Sculpture, les Salons, etc. 

3 See let Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of 
Hutcheson and Reid. 

3 The theory of Kant is found in the Critique of Judgment, and in the 
Observations on the Sentiment of the Beautiful and ike Sublime. See the 
excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 137 

us, in itself and in the objects, whatever they may be, that 
bear its impress ; or in the mind of man, in the faculties 
that attain it, in the ideas or sentiments that it excites in 
us. Now, the true method, which must now be familiar 
to you, makes setting out from man to arrive at things a 
law for us. Therefore, psychological analysis will here 
again be our point of departure, and the study of the state 
of the soul in presence of the beautiful will prepare us 
for that of the beautiful considered in itself and its 
objects. 

Let us interrogate the soul in the presence of beauty. 

Is it not an incontestable fact that before certain objects, 
under very different circumstances, we pronounce the fol- 
lowing judgment : — This object is beautiful ? This affirma- 
tion is not always explicit. Sometimes it manifests itself 
only by a cry of admiration ; sometimes it silently rises in 
the mind that scarcely has a consciousness of it. The 
forms of this phenomenon vary, but the phenomenon is 
attested by the most common and most certain observa- 
tion, and all languages bear witness of it. 

Although sensible objects, with most men, oftenest pro- 
voke the judgment of the beautiful, they do not alone 
possess this advantage ; the domain of beauty is more ex- 
tensive than the domain of the physical world exposed to 
our view; it has no bounds but those of entire nature, and 
of the soul and genius of man. Before a heroic action, by 
the remembrance of a great sacrifice; even by the thought 
of the most abstract truths firmly united with each other 
in a system admirable at once for its simplicity and its 
productiveness ; finally, before objects of another order, 
before the works of art, this same phenomenon is pro- 
duced in us. We recognise in all these objects, however 



138 LECTURE SIXTH. 

different, a common quality in regard to which our judg- 
ment is pronounced, and this quality we call beauty. 

The philosophy of sensation, in faithfulness to itself, 
should have attempted to reduce the beautiful to the 
agreeable. 

Without doubt, beauty is almost always agreeable to the 
senses, or at least it must not wound them. Most of our 
ideas of the beautiful come to us by sight and hearing, and 
all the arts, without exception, are addressed to the soul 
through the body. An object which makes us suffer, were 
it the most beautiful in the world, very rarely appears to 
us such. Beauty has little influence over a soul occupied 
with grief. 

But if an agreeable sensation often accompanies the 
idea of the beautiful, we must not conclude that one is 
the other. 

Experience testifies that all agreeable things do not 
appear beautiful, and that, among agreeable things, those 
which are most so are not the most beautiful, — a sure 
sign that the agreeable is not the beautiful ; for if one is 
identical with the other, they should never be separated, 
but should always be commensurate with each other. 

Far from this, whilst all our senses give us agreeable 
sensations, only two have the privilege of awakening in us 
the idea of beauty. Does one ever say: This is a beauti- 
ful taste, this is a beautiful smell? Nevertheless, one 
should say it, if the beautiful is the agreeable. On the 
other hand, there are certain pleasures of odour and taste 
that move sensibility more than the greatest beauties of 
nature and art ; and even among the perceptions of hear- 
ing and sight, those are not always the most vivid that most 
excite in us the idea of beauty. Do not pictures, ordinary 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 139 

in colouring*,, often move us more deeply than many dazz- 
ling productions, more seductive to the eye, less touching 
to the soul ? I say farther ; sensation not only does not 
produce the idea of the beautiful, but sometimes stifles it. 
Let an artist occupy himself with the reproduction of 
voluptuous forms ; while pleasing the senses, he disturbs, 
he repels in us the chaste and pure idea of beauty. The 
agreeable is not, then, the measure of the beautiful, since 
in certain cases it effaces it and makes us forget it ; it is 
not, then, the beautiful, since it is found, and in the high- 
est degree, where the beautiful is not. 

This conducts us to the essential foundation of the dis- 
tinction between the idea of the beautiful and the sensa- 
tion of the agreeable, to wit, the difference already ex- 
plained between sensibility and reason. 

When an object makes you experience an agreeable 
sensation, if one asks you why this object is agreeable to 
you, you can answer nothing, except that such is your 
impression; and if one informs you that this same object 
produces upon others a different impression and displeases 
them, you are not much astonished, because you know 
that sensibility is diverse, and that sensations must not be 
disputed. Is it the same when an object is not only 
agreeable to you, but when you judge that it is beautiful? 
You pronounce, for example, that this figure is noble and 
beautiful, that this sun-rise or sun-set is beautiful, that dis- 
interestedness and devotion are beautiful, that virtue is 
beautiful ; if one contests with you the truth of these judg- 
ments, then you are not as accommodating as you were 
just now; you do not accept the dissent as an inevitable 
effect of different sensibilities, you no longer appeal to 
your sensibility which naturally terminates in you, you 



HO LECTURE SIXTH. 

appeal to an authority which is made for others as well as 
you, that of reason ; you believe that you have the right 
of accusing him with error who contradicts your judgment, 
for here your judgment rests no longer on something 
variable and individual, like an agreeable or painful sen- 
sation. The agreeable is confined for us within the enclo- 
sure of our own organization, where it changes every 
moment, according to the perpetual revolutions of this 
organization, according to health and sickness, the state 
of the atmosphere, that of our nerves, etc. But it is not 
so with beauty; beauty, like truth, belongs to none of us; 
no one has the right to dispose of it arbitrarily, and when 
we say: this is true, this is beautiful, it is no longer the 
particular and variable impression of our sensibility that 
we express, it is the absolute judgment that reason im- 
poses on all men. 

Confound reason and sensibility, reduce the idea of the 
beautiful to the sensation of the agreeable, and taste no 
longer has a law. If a person says to me, in the presence 
of the Apollo Belvidere, that he feels nothing more agree- 
able than in presence of any other statue, that it does not 
please him at all, that he does not feel its beauty, I can- 
not dispute his impression ; but if this person thence con- 
cludes that the Apollo is not beautiful, I proudly contra- 
dict him, and declare that he is deceived. Grood taste is 
distinguished from bad taste ; but what does this distinc- 
tion signify, if the judgment of the beautiful is resolved 
into a sensation? You say to me that I have no taste. 
What does that mean? Have I not senses like you? Does 
not the object which you admire act upon me as well as 
upon you ? Is not the impression which I feel as real as 
that which you feel? Whence comes it, then, that you 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 141 

are right, — you who only give expression to the impres- 
sion which you feel, and that I am wrong, — I who do 
precisely the same thing? Is it because those who feel 
like you are more numerous than those who feel like me? 
But here the number of voices means nothing? The 
beautiful being defined as that which produces on the 
senses an agreeable impression, a thing that pleases a 
single man, though it were frightfully ugly in the eyes of 
all the rest of the human race, must, nevertheless, and 
very legitimately, be called beautiful by him who receives 
from it an agreeable impression, for, so far as he is con- 
cerned, it satisfies the definition. There is, then, no true 
beauty; there are only relative and changing beauties, 
beauties of circumstance, custom, fashion, and all these 
beauties, however different, will have a right to the same 
respect, provided they meet sensibilities to which they are 
agreeable. And as there is nothing in this world, in the 
infinite diversity of our dispositions, which may not 
please some one, there will be nothing that is not beauti- 
ful ; or, to speak more truly, there will be nothing either 
beautiful or ugly, and the Hottentot Venus will equal the 
Venus de Medici. The absurdity of the consequences 
demonstrates the absurdity of the principle. But there is 
only one means of escaping these consequences, which is 
to repudiate the principle, and recognise the judgment of 
the beautiful as an absolute judgment, and, as such, en- 
tirely different from sensation. 

Finally, and this is the last rock of empiricism, is there 
in us only the idea of an imperfect and finite beauty, and 
while we are admiring the real beauties that nature 
furnishes, are we not elevating ourselves to the idea of a 
superior beauty, which Plato, with great excellence of 



142 LECTUKE SIXTH. 

expression, calls the Idea of the beautiful, which, after 
him, all men of delicate taste, all true artists call the ideal? 
If we establish degrees in the beauty of things, is it not 
because we compare them, often without noticing it, with 
this ideal, which is to us the measure and rule of all our 
judgments in regard to particular beauties? How could 
this idea of absolute beauty enveloped in all our judgments 
on the beautiful, — how could this ideal beauty, which it is 
impossible for us not to conceive, be revealed to us by 
sensation, by a faculty variable and relative like the ob- 
jects that it perceives? 

The philosophy which deduces all our ideas from the 
senses falls to the ground, then, before the idea of the 
beautiful. It remains to see whether this idea can be 
better explained by means of sentiment, which is different 
from sensation, which so nearly resembles reason that 
good judges have often taken it for reason, and have made 
it the principle of the idea of the beautiful as well as that 
of the good. It is already a progress, without doubt, to 
go from sensation to sentiment, and Hutcheson and Smith 1 
are in our eyes very different philosophers from Condillac 
and Helvetius ; 2 but we believe that we have sufficiently 
established 3 that, in confounding sentiment with reason, 
we deprive it of its foundation and rule, that sentiment, 
particular and variable in its nature, different to different 
men, and in each man continually changing, cannot be 
sufficient for itself. Nevertheless, if sentiment is not a 

1 On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the part of truth 
and the part of error, which their philosophy contains, see the detailed 
lectures which we have devoted to them, 1st Series, vol. iv. 

2 See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and Hel- 
vetias, Ibid., vol. iii. 

8 See lecture 5, in this vol. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 143 

principle, it is a true and important fact, and, after having 
distinguished it well from reason, we ourselves proceed to 
elevate it far above sensation, and elucidate the important 
part it plays in the perception of beauty. 

Place yourself before an object of nature, wherein men 
recognise beauty, and observe what takes place within 
you at the sight of this object. Is it not certain that, at 
the same time that you judge that it is beautiful, you also 
feel its beauty, that is to say, that you experience at the 
sight of it a delightful emotion, and that you are attracted 
towards this object by a sentiment of sympathy and love? 
In other cases you judge otherwise, and feel an opposite 
sentiment. Aversion accompanies the judgment of the 
ugly, as love accompanies , the judgment of the beautiful. 
And this sentiment is awakened not only in presence of 
the objects of nature : — all objects, whatever they may be, 
that we judge to be ugly or beautiful, have the power to 
excite in us this sentiment. Vary the circumstances as 
much as you please, place me before an admirable edifice 
or before a beautiful landscape ; represent to my mind the 
great discoveries of Descartes and Newton, the exploits of 
the great Conde, the virtue of St. Vincent de Paul ; ele- 
vate me still higher; awaken in me the obscure and too 
much forgotten idea of the infinite being; whatever you 
do, as often as you give birth within me to the idea of the 
beautiful, you give me an internal and exquisite joy, al- 
ways followed by a sentiment of love for the object that 
caused it. 

The more beautiful the object is, the more lively is the 
joy which it gives the soul, and the more profound is the 
love without being passionate. In admiration judgment 
rules, but animated by sentiment. Is admiration in- 



1 44 LECTURE SIXTH. 

creased to the degree of impressing upon the soul an 
emotion, an ardour that seems to exceed the limits of 
human nature? this state of the soul is called enthusiasm: 

"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calesciraus illo." 

The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well 
as the idea of the beautiful, only by changing its nature. 
It confounds it with agreeable sensation, and, conse- 
quently, for it the love of beauty can be nothing but 
desire. There is no theory more contradicted by facts. 

What is desire? It is an emotion of the soul which 
has, for its avowed or secret end, possession, Admiration 
is in its nature respectful, whilst desire tends to profane 
its object. 

Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in 
him who experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a cer- 
tain point, suffering. The sentiment of the beautiful is to 
itself its own satisfaction. 

Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of 
the beautiful, free from all desire, and always without 
fear, elevates and warms the soul, and may transport it 
even to enthusiasm, without making it know the troubles 
of passion. The artist sees only the beautiful where the 
sensual man sees only the alluring and the frightful. On 
a vessel tossed by a tempest, while the passengers tremble 
at the sight of the threatening waves, and at the sound of 
the thunder that breaks over their heads, the artist 
remains absorbed in the contemplation of the sublime 
spectacle. Vernet has himself lashed to the mast in 
order to contemplate for a longer time the storm in its 
majestic and terrible beauty. When he knows fear, when 
lie participates in the common feeling, the artist vanishes, 
here no more remains anything but the man. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 145 

The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being 
desire, that each excludes the other. Let me take a 
common example. Before a table loaded with meats and 
delicious wines, the desire of enjoyment is awakened, but 
not the sentiment of the beautiful. Suppose that if, in- 
stead of thinking of the pleasures which all these things 
spread before my eyes promise me, I only take notice 
of the manner in which they are arranged and set upon 
the table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the 
beautiful might in some degree be produced ; but surety 
this will be neither the need nor the desire of appropriat- 
ing this symmetry, this order. 

It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame 
desire, but to purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a 
woman is, — I do not mean that common and gross beauty 
which Reubens in vain animates with his brilliant colouring 
but that ideal beauty which antiquity and Raphael under- 
stood so well, — the more, at the sight of this noble creature 
is desire tempered by an exquisite and delicate sentiment, 
and is sometimes even replaced by a disinterested wor- 
ship. If the Venus of the Capitol, or the Saint Cecilia 
excites in you sensual desires, you are not made to feel 
the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to 
the senses than to the soul; in painting beauty he only 
seeks to awaken in us sentiment ; and when he has carried 
this sentiment as far as enthusiasm, he has obtained the 
last triumph of art. 

The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special 
sentiment, as the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. 
But is this sentiment, one in itself, manifested only in a 
single way, and applied only to a single kind of beauty ? 
Here again — here, as always — let us interrogate experience. 



146 LECTURE SIXTH. 

When we have before our eyes an object whose forms 
are perfectly determined, and the whole easy to embrace, 
— a beautiful flower, a beautiful statue, an antique temple 
of moderate size, — each of our faculties attaches itself to 
this object, and rests upon it with an unalloyed satisfac- 
tion. Our senses easily perceive its details; our reason 
seizes the happy harmony of all its parts. Should this 
object disappear, we can distinctly represent it to our- 
selves, so precise and fixed are its forms. The soul in 
this contemplation feels again a sweet and tranquil joy, a 
sort of efflorescence. 

Let us consider, on the other hand, an object with 
vague and indefinite forms, which may nevertheless be 
very beautiful: the impression which we experience is 
without doubt a pleasure still, but it is a pleasure of a 
different order. This object does not call forth all our 
powers like the first. Reason conceives it, but the senses 
do not perceive the whole of it, and imagination does not 
distinctly represent it to itself. The senses and the 
imagination try in vain to attain its last limits; our 
faculties are enlarged, are inflated, thus to speak, in 
order to embrace it, but it escapes and surpasses them. 
The pleasure that we feel comes from the very magnitude 
of the object; but, at the same time, this magnitude pro- 
duces in us I know not what melancholy sentiment, 
because it is disproportionate to us. At the sight of 
the starry heavens, of the vast sea, of gigantic mountains, 
admiration is mingled with sadness. These objects, in 
reality finite, like the world itself, seem to us infinite, in 
our want of power to comprehend their immensity, and> 
resembling what is truly without bounds, they awaken in 
us the idea of the infinite, that idea which at once elevates 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 147 

and confounds our intelligence. The corresponding senti- 
ment which the soul experiences is an austere pleasure. 

In order to render the difference which we wish to 
mark more perceptible, examples may be multiplied. Are 
you affected in the same way at the sight of a meadow, 
variegated in its rather limited dimensions, whose extent 
the eye can easily take in, and at the aspect of an inac- 
cessible mountain, at the foot of which the ocean breaks? 
Do the sweet light of day and a melodious voice produce 
upon you the same effect as darkness and silence ? In 
the intellectual and moral order, are you moved in the 
same way when a rich and good man opens his purse to 
the indigent, and when a magnanimous man gives hospi- 
tality to his enemy, and saves him at the peril of his own 
life? Take some light poetry in which measure, spirit, 
and grace, everywhere predominate; take an ode, and 
especially an epistle of Horace, or some small verses of 
Voltaire, and compare them with the Iliad, or those 
immense Indian poems that are filled with marvellous 
events, wherein the highest metaphysics are united to 
recitals by turns graceful or pathetic, those poems that 
have more than two hundred thousand verses, whose per- 
sonages are gods or symbolic beings; and see whether 
the impressions that you experience will be the same. 
As a last example, suppose, on the one hand, a writer 
who, with two or three strokes of the pen, sketches an 
analysis of intelligence, agreeable and simple, but without 
depth, and, on the other, a philosopher who engages in a 
long labour in order to arrive at the most rigorous decom- 
position of the faculty of knowing, and unfolds to you a 
long chain of principles and consequences, — read the 
Traite des Sensations and The Critique of Pure Reason, 



1 48 LECTURE SIXTH. 

and, even leaving out of the account the truth and the 
falsehood they may contain, with reference solely to the 
beautiful, compare your impressions. 

These are, then, two very different sentiments ; different 
names have also been given them ; one has been more 
particularly called the sentiment of the beautiful, the 
other that of the sublime. 

In order to complete the study of the different faculties 
that enter into the perception of beauty, after reason and 
sentiment, it remains to us to speak of a faculty npt less 
necessary, which animates them and vivifies them, — ima- 
gination. 

When sensation, judgment, and sentiment have been 
produced by the occasion of an external object, they are 
reproduced even in the absence of this object ; this is 
memory. 

Memory is double: — not only do I remember that I 
have been in the presence of a certain object, but I repre- 
sent to myself this absent object as it was, as I have seen, 
felt, and judged it : — the remembrance is then an image. 
In this last case, memory has been called by some philo- 
sophers imaginative memory. Such is the foundation of 
imagination; but imagination is something more still. 

The mind, applying itself to the images furnished by 
memory, decomposes them, chooses between their different 
traits, and forms of them new images. Without this new 
power, imagination would be captive in the circle of 
memory. 

The gift of being strongly affected by objects and re- 
producing their absent or vanished images, and the power 
of modifying these images so as to compose of them new 
ones, — do they fully constitute what men call imagina- 



TIIE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 149 

tion ? No, or at least, if these are indeed the proper ele- 
ments of imagination, there must be something else added, 
to wit, the sentiment of the beautiful in all its degrees. 
By this means is a great imagination preserved and 
kindled. Did the careful reading of Titus Livius enable 
the author of the Horaces to vividly represent to himself 
some of the scenes described, to seize their principal traits 
and combine them happily ? From the outset, sentiment, 
love of the beautiful, especially of the morally beautiful, 
were requisite ; there was required that great heart 
whence sprang the word of the ancient Horace. 

Let us be well understood. We do not say that senti- 
ment is imagination, we say that it is the source whence 
imagination derives its inspirations and becomes produc- 
tive. If men are so different in regard to imagination, it 
is because some are cold in presence of objects, cold in the 
representations which they preserve of them, cold also in 
the combinations which they form of them, whilst others, 
endowed with a particular sensibility, are vividly moved 
by the first impressions of objects, preserve strong recol- 
lections of them, and carry into the exercise of all their 
faculties this same force of emotion. Take away senti- 
ment and all else is inanimate ; let it manifest itself, and 
every thing receives warmth, colour, and life. 

It is then impossible to limit imagination, as the word 
seems to demand, to images properly so called, and to 
ideas that are related to physical objects. To remember 
sounds, to choose between them, to combine them in order 
to draw from them new effects, — does not this belong to 
imagination, although sound is not an image ? The true 
musician does not possess less imagination than the 
painter. Imagination is conceded to the poet when he 



150 LECTURE SIXTH. 

rc -traces the images of nature ; will this same faculty be 
refused him when he re-traces sentiments ? But, besides 
images and sentiments, does not the poet employ the high 
thoughts of justice, liberty, virtue, in a word, moral ideas ? 
Will it be said that in moral paintings, in pictures of the 
intimate life of the soul, either graceful or energetic, there 
is no imagination? 

You see what is the extent of imagination : it has no 
limits, it is applied to all things. Its distinctive character 
is that of deeply moving the soul in the presence of a 
beautiful object, or by its remembrance alone, or even by 
the idea alone of an imaginary object. It is recognised 
by the sign that it produces, by the aid of its representa- 
tions, the same impression as, and even an impression 
more vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If 
beauty, absent and dreamed of, does not affect you as much 
as, and more than, present beauty, you may have a thou- 
sand other gifts, — that of imagination has been refused 
you. 

In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in 
comparison with its own fictions. One may feel that ima- 
gination is his master by the ennui that real and present 
things give him. The phantoms of imagination have a 
vagueness, an indefiniteness of form, which moves a thou- 
sand times more than the clearness and distinctness of 
actual perceptions. And then, unless we are wholly mad, — 
and passion does not always render this service, — it is very 
difficult to see reality otherwise than as it is not, that is 
to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes 
of an image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses 
it, embellishes it to his own liking. There is at the bottom 
of the human soul an infinite power of feeling and loving 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 151 

to which the entire world does not answer, still less a 
single one of its creatures, however charming. All mortal 
beauty, viewed near by, does not suffice for this insatiable 
power which it excites and cannot satisfy. But from afar, 
its effects disappear or are diminished, shades are mingled 
and confounded in the clear-obscure of memory and dream, 
and the objects please more because they are less deter- 
minate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is, that 
they represent men and things otherwise than as they are, 
and that they have a passion for such fantastic images. 
Those that are called positive men, are men without ima- 
gination, who perceive only what they see, and deal with 
reality as it is instead of transforming it. They have, in 
general, more reason than sentiment ; they may be seri- 
ously, profoundly honest ; they will never be either poets 
or artists. "What makes the poet or artist is, with a foun- 
dation of good sense and reason — without which all the 
rest is useless — a sensitive, even a passionate heart ; above 
all, a vivid, a powerful imagination. 

If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagi- 
nation returns with usury to sentiment what it gives. 

This pure and ardent passion, this worship of beauty 
that makes the great artist, can be found only in a man 
of imagination. In fact, the sentiment of the beautiful 
may be awakened in each one of us before any beautiful 
object ; but, when this object has disappeared, if its image 
does not subsist vivaciously retraced, the sentiment which 
it for a moment excited is little by little effaced ; it may 
be revived at the sight of another object, but only to be 
extinguished again, — always dying to be born again at 
hazard ; not being nourished, increased, exalted by the 
vivacious and continuous reproduction of its object in the 



152 LECTURE SIXTH. 

imagination, it wants that inspiring power, without which 
there is no artist, no poet. 

A word more on another faculty, which is not a 
simple faculty, but a happy combination of those which 
have just been mentioned, — taste, so ill treated, so arbi- 
trarily limited in all theories. 

If, after having heard a beautiful poetical or musical 
work, admired a statue or a picture, you are able to recall 
what your senses have perceived, to see again the absent 
picture, to hear again the sounds that no longer exist; 
in a word, if you have imagination, you possess one of the 
conditions without which there is no true taste. In 
fact, in order to relish the works of imagination, is it not 
necessary to have taste ? Do we not need, in order to 
feel an author, not to equal him, without doubt, but to 
resemble him in some degree ? Will not a man of sensi- 
ble, but dry and austere mind, like Le Batteux or 
Condillac, be insensible to the happy darings of genius, 
and will he not carry into criticism a narrow severity, a 
reason very little reasonable — since he does not compre- 
hend all the parts of human nature, — an intolerance that 
mutilates and blemishes art while thinking to purify it ? 

On the other hand, imagination does not suffice for the 
appreciation of beauty. Moreover, that vivacity of ima- 
gination so precious to taste, when it is somewhat re- 
strained, produces, when it rules, only a very imperfect 
taste, which, not having reason for a basis, carelessly 
judges, runs the risk of misunderstanding the greatest 
beauty, — beauty that is regulated. Unity in composition, 
harmony of all the parts, just proportion of details, skil- 
ful combination of effects, discrimination, sobriety, mea- 
sure, are so many merits it will little feel, and will not put 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 153 

in their place. Imagination lias doubtless much to do with 
works of art ; but, in fine, it is not every thing. Is it only 
imagination that makes the Polyeucte and the Misanthrope, 
two incomparable marvels ? Is there not, also, in the pro- 
found simplicity of plan, in the measured development of 
action, in the sustained truth of characters, a superior rea- 
son, different from imagination which furnishes the supe- 
rior colours, and from sensibility that gives the passion ? 

Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste 
ought to possess an enlightened but ardent love of beauty ; 
he must take delight in meeting it, must search for it, 
must summon it. To comprehend and demonstrate that a 
thing is not beautiful, is an ordinary pleasure, an ungrate- 
ful task ; but to discern a beautiful thing, to be penetrated 
with its beauty, to make it evident, and make others 
participate in our sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a gene- 
rous task. Admiration is, for him who feels it, at once a 
happiness and an honour. It is a happiness to feel deeply 
what is beautiful; it is an honour to know how to recog- 
nise it. Admiration is the sign of an elevated reason 
served by a noble heart. It is above a small criticism, 
that is sceptical and powerless ; but it is the soul of a 
large criticism, a criticism that is productive : — it is, thus 
to speak, the divine part of taste. 

After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, 
shall we say nothing of genius which makes it live again? 
Genius is nothing else than taste in action, that is to say, 
the three powers of taste carried to their culmination, and 
armed with a new and mysterious power, the power of 
execution. But we are already entering upon the domain 
of art. Let us wait, we shall soon find art again and the 
genius that accompanies it. 



154 



LECTURE VII. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 



Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful : the beauti- 
ful cannot be reduced to what is useful. — Nor to convenience. — Nor to 
proportion. — Essential characters of the beautiful. — Different kinds of 
beauties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intel- 
lectual beauty. Moral beauty. — Ideal beauty : it is especially moral 
beauty. — God, the first principle of the beautiful. — Theory of Plato. 



We have made known the beautiful in ourselves, in the 
faculties that perceive it and appreciate it, in reason, sen- 
timent, imagination, taste; we come, according to the order 
determined by the method, to other questions: — What 
is the beautiful in objects? What is the beautiful taken 
in itself? What are its characters and different spe- 
cies ? What, in fine, is its first and last principle? All 
these questions must be treated, and, if possible, solved. 
Philosophy has its point of departure in psychology; 
but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it 
must set out from man, and reach things themselves. 

The history of philosophy offers many theories on the 
nature of the beautiful : — we do not wish to enumerate 
nor discuss them all; we will designate the most impor- 
tant. 1 

1 If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant re- 
futation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty, he may 
read the Hippias of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The Phiedrus, 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 155 

There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as 
that which pleases the senses, that which procures an 
agreeable impression. We will not stop at this opinion. 
"We have sufficiently refuted it in showing that it is impos- 
sible to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable. 

A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the 
place of the agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of 
the same principle. Neither is the beautiful the object 
which procures for us in the present moment an agreeable 
but fugitive sensation, it is the object which can often 
procure for us this same sensation or others similar. No 
great effort of observation or reasoning is necessary to 
convince us that utility has nothing to do with beauty. 
What is useful is not always beautiful. What is beautiful 
is not always useful, and what is at once useful and beau- 
tiful is beautiful for some other reason than its utility. 
Observe a lever or a pulley: surely nothing is more useful. 
Nevertheless, you are not tempted to say that this is 
beautiful. Have you discovered an antique vase admir- 
ably worked? You exclaim that this vase is beautiful, 
without thinking to seek of what use it may be to you. 
Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful things, and at 
the same time, are useful things, because they economize 
space, because objects symmetrically disposed are easier 
to find when one wants them ; but that is not what makes 
for us the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately seize 
this kind of beauty, and it is often late enough before we 
recognise the utility that is found in it. It even some- 
times happens, that after having admired the beauty of 

vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory; but it is in 
the Banquet (Ibid.), and particularly in the discourse of Diotimus, that we 
must look for the thought of Plato carried to its highest degree of develop- 
ment, and clothed with all the beauty of human language. 



156 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

an object, we are not able to divine its use, although it 
may have one. The useful is, then, entirely different 
from the beautiful, far from being its foundation. 

A celebrated and very ancient 1 theory makes the beauti- 
ful consist in the perfect suitableness of means to their 
end. Here the beautiful is no longer the useful, it is the 
suitable; these two ideas must be distinguished. A 
machine produces excellent effects, economy of time, 
work, etc. ; it is therefore useful. If, moreover, examin- 
ing its construction, I find that each piece is in its place, 
and that all are skilfully disposed for the result which 
they should produce; even without regarding the utility 
of this result, as the means are well adapted to their end, 
I judge that there is suitableness in it. We are already 
approaching the idea of the beautiful ; for we are no 
longer considering what is useful, but what is proper. 
Now, we have not yet attained the true character of 
beauty; there are, in fact, objects very well adapted to 
their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench without 
ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, pro- 
vided all the parts are firmly connected, provided one may 
sit down on it with safety, provided it may be for this 
purpose suitable, agreeable even, may give an example of 
the most perfect adaptation of means to an end ; it will 
not, therefore, be said that this bench is beautiful. There 
is here always this difference between suitableness and 
utility, that an object to be beautiful has no need of being 
useful, but that it is not beautiful if it does not possess 
suitableness, if there is in it a disagreement between the 
end and the means. 

Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, 

1 See the Ilippias. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. ] 57 

and this is, in fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it 
is not the only one. It is very certain, that an object ill- 
proportioned cannot be beautiful. There is in all beauti- 
ful objects, however far they may be from geometric 
form, a sort of living geometry. But, I ask, is it propor- 
tion that is dominant in this slender tree, with flexible 
and graceful branches, with rich and shady foliage? 
What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what makes 
that of a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime 
ode? It is not, I know, wanting in law and rule, neither 
is it law and rule; often, even what at first strikes us is 
an apparent irregularity. It is absurd to pretend that 
what makes us admire all these things and many more, 
is the same quality that makes us admire a geometric 
figure, that is to say, the exact correspondence of parts. 

What we say of proportion may be said of order, which 
is something less mathematical than proportion, but 
scarcely explains better what is free, varied, and negligent 
in certain beauties. 

All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmony, 
and proportion, are at foundation only one and the same 
theory which in the beautiful sees unity before all. And 
surely unity is beautiful; it is an important part of beauty, 
but it is not the whole of beauty. 

The most probable theory of the beautiful is that which 
composes it of two contrary and equally necessary ele- 
ments, unity and variety. Behold a beautiful flower. 
Without doubt, unity, order, proportion, symmetry even, 
are in it ; for, without these qualities, reason would be 
absent from it, and all things are made with a marvellous 
reason. But, at the same time, what a diversity! How 
many shades in the colour, what richness in the least 



158 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

details ! Even in mathematics, what is beautiful is not 
an abstract principle, it is a principle carrying with itself 
a long chain of consequences. There is no beauty without 
life, and life is movement, is diversity. 

Unity and variety are applied to all orders of beauty. 
Let us rapidly run over these different orders. 

In the first place, there are beautiful objects, to speak 
properly, and sublime objects. A beautiful object, we 
have seen, is something completed, circumscribed, limited, 
which all oar faculties easily embrace, because the differ- 
ent parts are on a somewhat narrow scale. A sublime 
object is that which, by forms not in themselves dispropor- 
tionate, but less definite and more difficult to seize, 
awakens in us the sentiment of the infinite. 

There are two very distinct species of beauty. But 
reality is inexhaustible, and in all the degrees of reality 
there is beauty. 

Among sensible objects, colours, sounds, figures, move- 
ments, are capable of producing the idea and the senti- 
ment of the beautiful. All these beauties are ranged 
under that species of beauty which, right or wrong, is 
called physical beauty. 

If from the world of sense we elevate ourselves to that 
of mind, truth, and science, we shall find there beauties 
more severe, but not less real. The universal laws that 
govern bodies, those that govern intelligences, the great 
principles that contain and produce long deductions, the 
genius that creates, in the artist, poet, or philosopher, — 
all these are beautiful, as well as nature herself: this is 
what is called intellectual beauty. 

Finally, if we consider the moral world and its laws, 
the idea of liberty, virtue, and devotedness, here the 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 159 

austere justice of an Aristides, there the heroism of a 
Leonidas, the prodigies of charity or patriotism, we shall 
certainly find a third order of beauty that still surpasses 
the other two, to wit, moral beauty. 

Neither let us forget to apply to all these beauties the 
distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. There 
are, then, the beautiful and the sublime at once in nature, 
in ideas, in sentiments, in actions. What an almost infinite 
variety in beauty! 

After having enumerated all these differences, could we 
not reduce them? They are incontestable; but, in this 
diversity is there not unity ? Is there not a single beauty 
of which all particular beauties are only reflections, shades, 
degrees, or degradations? 

Plotinus, in his treatise On the Beautiful, 1 proposed to 
himself this question. He asks — What is the beautiful in 
itself? I see clearly that such or such a form is beautiful, 
that such or such an action is also beautiful ; but why and 
how are these two objects, so dissimilar, beautiful? What 
is the common quality which, being found in these two 
objects, ranges them under the general idea of the beauti- 
ful? 

It is necessary to answer this question, or the theory 
of beauty is a maze without issue ; one applies the same 
name to the most diverse things, without understanding 
the real unity that authorizes this unity of name. 

Either the diversities which we have designated in 
beauty are such that it is impossible to discover their 
relation, or these diversities are especially apparent, and 
have their harmony, their concealed unity. 

1 First Ennead, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-Hillaire. on the 
School of Alexandria, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus, p. 197. 



160 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

Is it pretended that this unity is a chimera? Then 
physical beauty, moral beauty, and intellectual beauty, 
are strangers to each other. What, then, will the artist 
do? He is surrounded by different beauties, and he must 
make a work ; for such is the recognised law of art. But 
if this unity that is imposed upon him is a factitious 
unity, if there are in nature only essentially dissimilar 
beauties, art deceives and lies to us. Let it be ex- 
plained, then, how falsehood is the law of art. That 
cannot be; the unity that art expresses, it must have 
somewhere caught a glimpse of, in order to transport it 
into its works. 

We neither retract the distinction between the beautiful 
and the sublime, nor the other distinctions just now indi- 
cated; but it is necessary to re-unite after having dis- 
tinguished them. These distinctions and these re-unions 
are not contradictory: the great law of beauty, like that 
of truth, is unity as well as variety. All is one, and all 
is diverse. We have divided beauty into three great 
classes — physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral 
beauty. We must now seek the unity of these three sorts 
of beauty. Now, we think that they resolve themselves 
into one and the same beauty, moral beauty, meaning by 
that, with moral beauty properly so called, all spiritual 
beauty. 

Let us put this opinion to the proof of facts. 

Place yourself before that statue of Apollo which is 
called Apollo Belvidere, and observe attentively what 
strikes you in that master-piece. Winkelmann, who was 
not a metaphysician, but a learned antiquarian, a man of 
taste without system, made a celebrated analysis of the 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 161 

Apollo. 1 It is curious to study it. What Winkelmann 
extols before all, is the character of divinity starifped 
upon the immortal youth that invests that beautiful body, 

1 Winkelmann bas twice described tbe Apollo, History of Art among 
the Ancients, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap, hi., 
Art among the Greeks: — "The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that God in 
a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he has just 
killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a victory so 
little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to represent 
the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose, which, accord- 
ing to the ancients, was its seat ; and the disdain on the lips. He expressed 
the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation 
of the under-lip, which causes the same movement in the chin." — Ibid., 
vol. ii., book iv., chap, vi., Art under the Emperors : — " Of all the antique 
statues that have escaped the fury of barbai'ians and the destructive hand 
of time, the statue of Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. 
One would say that the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed 
matter only because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his 
idea. As much as Homer's descripition of Apollo surpasses the descrip- 
tions which other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue 
excels all the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and 
its attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A 
perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of Elysium, 
clothes with loveable youth the beautiful body, and shines with sweetness 
over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the merit of this 
chef-d'oeuvre of art, we must be penetrated with intellectual beauty, and 
become, if possible, the creatures of a celestial nature; for there is nothing 
mortal in it, nothing subject to the wants of humanity. That body, whose 
forms are not interrupted by a vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems 
animated with a celestial spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapour in all 
the parts of that admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, 
against which he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid 
course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated 
with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his august 
look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond his victory. 
Disdain sits upon his lips ; the indignation that he breathes distends his 
nostrils, and ascends to his eye-brows; but an unchangeable serenity is 
painted on his brow, and his eye is full of sweetness, as though the Muses 
were caressing him. Among all the Bgures that remain to us of Jupiter, 
there is none in which the father of the gods approaches the grandeur with 
which he manifested himself to the intelligence of Homer ; but in the 
traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we find the individual beauties of all the 

H 



1 6'2 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

upon the height, a little above that of man, upon the 
majestic altitude, upon the imperious movement, upon the 
ensemble, and all the details of the person. The fore- 
head is indeed that of a god, — an unalterable placidity 
dwells upon it. Lower down, humanity re-appears some- 
what; and that is very necessary, in order to interest 
humanity in the works of art. In that satisfied look, in 
the distension of the nostrils, in the elevation of the 
under-lip, are at once felt anger mingled with disdain, 
pride of victory, and the little fatigue which it has cost. 
Weigh well each word of Winkelmann: you will find there 
a moral impression. The tone of the learned antiquary is 
elevated, little by little, to enthusiasm, and his analysis 
becomes a hymn to spiritual beauty. 

Instead of a statue, observe a real and living man. 
Regard that man who, solicited by the strongest motives 
to sacrifice duty to fortune, triumphs over interest, after 
a heroic struggle, and sacrifices fortune to virtue. Re- 
other divinities united, as in that of Pandora. The forehead is the fore- 
head of Jupiter, enclosing the goddess of wisdom ; the eye-brows, by their 
movement, announce his supreme will ; the large eyes are those of the 
queen of the gods, orbed with dignity, and the mouth is an image of that 
of Bacchus, where breathed voluptuousness. Like the tender branches of 
the vine, his beautiful locks flow around his head, as if they were lightly 
agitated by the zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with the essence of 
the gods, and are charmingly arranged over his head by the hand of the 
Graces. At the sight of this marvel of art, I forget every thing else, and 
my mind takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with dig- 
nity ; from admiration I pass to ecstasy; I feel my breast dilating and 
rising, like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy; I am trans- 
ported to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria, — places which Apollo 
honoured with his presence: — the statue seems to be animated as it were 
with the beauty that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How 
can I describe thee, inimitable master-piece ? For this it would be ne- 
cessary that art itself should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I 
have just sketched, I lay before thee, as those who came to crown the 
gods, put their crowns at their feet, not being able to reach their heads." 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 163 

gard him at the moment when he is about to take this 
magnanimous resolution ; his face will appear to you 
beautiful, becauses it expresses the beauty of his soul. 
Perhaps, under all other circumstances, the face of the 
man is common, even trivial ; here, illuminated by the 
soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an im- 
posing character of beauty. So, the natural face of 
Socrates 1 contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian 
beauty ; but look at him on his death-bed, at the moment 
of drinking the hemlock, conversing with his disciples on 
the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to 
you sublime 2 

At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates ex- 
pires: — you have before your eyes no longer anything 
but his dead body ; the dead face preserves its beauty, as 
long as it preserves traces of the mind that animated it ; 
but little by little the expression is extinguished or disap- 
pears; the face then becomes vulgar and ugly. The ex- 
pression of death is hideous or sublime, — hideous at the 
aspect of the decomposition of the matter that no longer 
retains the spirit, — sublime when it awakens in us the 
idea of eternity. 

Consider the figure of man in repose : it is more beau- 
tiful than that of an animal, the figure of an animal is 
more beautiful than the form of any inanimate object. It 
is because the human figure, even in the absence of virtue 

1 See the last part of the Banquet, the discourse of Alcibiades, p. 326 
of vol. vi. of our translation. 

2 "We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which 
appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its reputa- 
tion. Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato listening to 
his master, as it were, from the bottom of his soul, without looking at him, 
with his back turned upon the scene that is passing, and lost in the con- 
templation of the intelligible world. 



164 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

and genius, always reflects an intelligent and moral na- 
ture, it is because the figure of an animal reflects senti- 
ment at least, and something of soul, if not the soul entire. 
If from man and the animal we descend to purely physi- 
cal nature, we shall still find'beauty there, as long as we 
find there some shade of intelligence, I know not what, 
that awakens in us some thought, some sentiment. Do 
we arrive at some piece of matter that expresses nothing, 
that signifies nothing, neither is the idea of beauty applied 
to it. But every thing that exists is animated. Matter 
is shaped and penetrated by forces that are not material, 
and it obeys laws that attest an intelligence everywhere 
present. The most subtile chemical analysis does not 
reach a dead and inert nature, but a nature that is organ- 
ized in its own way, that is neither deprived of forces nor 
laws. In the depths of the earth, as in the heights of the 
heavens, in a grain of sand as in a gigantic mountain, 
an immortal spirit shines through the thickest coverings. 
Let us contemplate nature with the eye of the soul as well 
as with the eye of the body: — everywhere a moral expres- 
sion will strike us, and the forms of things will impress us 
as symbols of thought. We have said that with man, and 
with the animal even, the figure is beautiful on account of 
the expression. But, when you are on the summit of the 
Alps, or before the immense Ocean, when you behold the 
rising or setting of the sun, at the beginning or the close 
of the day, do not these imposing pictures produce on you 
a moral effect ? Do all these grand spectacles appear only 
for the sake of appearing % Do we not regard them as ma- 
nifestations of an admirable power, intelligence, and wis- 
dom ? And, thus to speak, is not the face of nature expres- 
sive like that of man ? 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. ] 65 

Form cannot be simply a form, it must be the form of 
something. Physical beauty is, then, the sign of an inter- 
nal beauty, which is spiritual and moral beauty, and this 
is the foundation, the principle, the unity of the beautiful. 1 

All the beauties that we have just enumeraied and re- 
duced compose what is called the really beautiful. But, 
above real beauty, is a beauty of another order, — ideal 
beauty. The ideal resides neither in an individual nor in 
a collection of individuals. Nature or experience fur- 
nishes us the occasion of conceiving it, but it is essentially 
distinct. Let it once be conceived, and air natural figures, 
though never so beautiful, are only images of a superior 
beauty which they do not realise. Give me a beautiful 
action, and I will imagine one still more beautiful. The 
Apollo itself is open to criticism in more than one respect. 
The ideal continually recedes as we approach it. Its last 
termination is in the infinite, that is to say, in God ; or to 
speak more correctly, the true and absolute ideal is no- 
thing else than God himself. 

God, being the principle of all things, must for this rea- 
son be that of perfect beauty, and, consequently, of all 
natural beauties that express it more or less imperfectly; 
he is the principle of beauty, both as author of the physi- 
cal world and as father of the intellectual and moral 
world. 

1 We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us, con- 
firmed by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect 
minds : — it may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The 
Scotch philosopher terminates his Essay on Taste with these words, which 
happily remind us of the thought and manner of Plato himself : — " Whether 
the reasons that I have given to prove that sensible beauty is only the 
image of moral beauty appear sufficient or not, I hope that my doctrine, 
in attempting to unite the terrestrial Venus more closely to the celestial 
Venus, will not =«eem to have for its object to abase the first, and render 
her less worthy of the homage that mankind has always paid b*r." 



1 66 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

Is it not necessary to be a slave of the senses and of 
appearances in order to stop at movements, at forms, at 
sounds, at colours, whose harmonious combinations pro- 
duce the beauty of this visible world, and not to conceive 
behind this scene so magnificent and well regulated, the 
orderer, the geometer, the supreme artist? 

Physical beauty serves as an envelope to intellectual 
and moral beauty. 

"What can be the principle of intellectual beauty, that 
splendour of the true, except the principle of all truth? 

Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see, x 
two distinct elements, equally but diversely beautiful, 
justice and charity, respect and love of men. He who 
expresses in his conduct justice and charity, accomplishes 
the most beautiful of all works; the good man is, in his 
way, the greatest of all artists. But what shall we say of 
him who is the very substance of justice and the exhaust- 
less source of love? If our moral nature is beautiful, 
what must be the beauty of its author! His justice and 
goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His 
justice is the moral order that no human law makes, that 
all human laws are forced to express, that is preserved 
and perpetuated in the world by its own force. Let us 
descend into ourselves, and consciousness will attest the 
divine justice in the peace and contentment that accom- 
pany virtue, in the troubles and tortures that are the in- 
variable punishments of vice and crime. How many 
times, and with what eloquence, have men celebrated the 
indefatigable solicitude of Providence, its benefits every- 
where manifest in the smallest as well as in the greatest 
phenomena of nature, which we forget so easily because 

1 Part iii., lecture 15. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 167 

they have become so familiar to us, but which, on reflec- 
tion, call forth our mingled admiration and gratitude, and 
proclaim a good God, full of love for his creatures ! 

Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty 
that we have distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual 
beauty, moral beauty. 

In him also are re-united the two great forms of the 
beautiful distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, 
the beautiful and the sublime. God is, par excellence, the 
beautiful, — for what object satisfies more all our faculties, 
our reason, our imagination, our heart ! He offers to 
reason the highest idea, beyond which it has nothing more 
to seek; to imagination the most ravishing contemplation; 
to the heart a sovereign object of love. He is, then, per- 
fectly beautiful ; but is he not sublime also in other ways? 
If he extends the horizon of thought, it is to confound it 
in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul blooms at the 
spectacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be 
affrighted at the idea of his justice, which is not less pre- 
sent to it ? God is at once mild and terrible. At the 
same time that he is the life, the light, the movement, the 
ineffable grace of visible and finite nature, he is also 
called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the Absolute 
Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful 
attributes, as certain as the first, produce in the highest 
degree in the imagination and the soul that melancholy 
emotion excited by the sublime? Yes, God is for us the 
type and source of the two great forms of beauty, because 
he is to us at once an impenetrable enigma and still the 
clearest word that we are able to find for all enigmas 
Limited beings as we are, we comprehend nothing in 
comparison with that which is without limits, and we are 



I 68 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

able to explain nothing without that same thing which is 
without limits. By the being that we possess, we have 
some idea of the infinite being of God ; by the nothing- 
ness that is in us, we lose ourselves in the being of God ; 
and thus always forced to recur to him in order to explain 
anything, and always thrown back within ourselves under 
the weight of his infinitude, we experience by turns, or 
rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts 
us down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and asto- 
nishment, not to say insurmountable terror, which he 
alone can cause and allay, because he alone is the unity of 
the sublime and the beautiful. 

Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and 
infinite variety, — God, is necessarily the last reason, the 
ultimate foundation, the completed ideal of all beauty. 
This is the marvellous beauty that Diotimus had caught a 
glimpse of, and thus paints to Socrates in the Banquet : — 

" Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt 
from decay as well as increase, which is not beautiful 
in such a part and ugly in such another, beautiful only, 
at such a time, in such a place, in such a relation, 
beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no 
sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, 
which is not such a thought or such a particular science, 
which resides not in any being different from itself, as an 
animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any other thing, 
which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in 
which all other beauties participate, in such a way, never- 
theless, that their birth or their destruction neither dimi- 
nishes nor increases, nor in the least changes it! 

In order to arrive at this perfect beauty, it is necessary 
to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and, 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 1 69 

the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate 
ourselves unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, 
through all the degrees of the scale, from a single beauti- 
ful bcdy to two, from two to all others, from beautiful 
bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments 
to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to thought we 
arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object 
than the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it 
is in itself. 

u O my dear Socrates/' continued the stranger of Man- 
tinea, " that which can give value to this life is the spectacle 
of the eternal beauty. . . . What would be the destiny 
of a mortal to whom it should be granted to contemplate 
the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity, 
no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, 
and with all those vain charms that are condemned to 
perish, to whom it should be given to see face to face, 
under its sole form, the divine beauty ! * " 

1 Vol. vi. of our translation, p. 316-318. 



170 



LECTURE VIII. 

ON ART. 

Genius: — its attribute is creative power. — Refutation of the opinion that 
art is the imitation of nature.— M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremere 
de Quincy. — Refutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art 
has not solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity. — Nor 
even directly the moral and religious sentiment. — The proper and direct 
object of art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful ; 
this idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity 
between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal beauty 
to its principle, which is God. — True mission of art. 

Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in 
the works of nature, he is endowed with the power of re- 
producing it. At the sight of a natural beauty, whatever 
it may be, physical or moral, his first need is to feel and 
admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were over- 
whelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the 
sentiment is energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We 
wish to see again, we wish to feel again what caused us so 
vivid a pleasure, and for that end we attempt to revive 
the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our ima- 
gination represents it to us. Hence a work original and 
peculiar to man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduc- 
tion of beauty, and the power in us capable of reproducing 
it is called genius. 

What faculties are used in this free reproduction of 
the beautiful ? The same that serve to recognise and feel 



ON ART. 1 71 

it. Taste carried to the highest degree, if you always join 
to it an additional element, is genius. What is this ele- 
ment ? 

Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is 
called taste, — imagination, sentiment, reason. 

These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, 
but they are not sufficient for it. What essentially dis- 
tinguishes genius from taste is the attribute of creative 
power. Taste feels, judges, discusses, analyzes, but does 
not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and creative. 
The man of genius is not the master of the power that is 
in him ; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing 
what he feels that he is a man of genius. He suffers by 
withholding the sentiments, or images, or thoughts, that 
agitate his breast. It has been said that there is no su- 
perior man without some grain of folly ; but this folly, 
like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This 
mysterious power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire 
called it the devil in the body ; he demanded it even in a 
comedian in order to be a comedian of genius. Give 
to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a I- 
know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it 
until it has delivered itself of what consumes it ; until, by 
expressing them, it has solaced its pains and its joys, its 
emotions, its ideas ; until its reveries have become living 
works. Thus two things characterize genius ; at first, the 
vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power of 
producing ; for the need without the power is only a ma- 
lady that resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above 
all, is essentially, the power of doing, of inventing, of 
creating. Taste is contented with observing, with admir- 
ing. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination, con- 



172 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

sumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least 
nothing great. Genius alone has the power to convert 
conceptions into creations. 

If genius creates it does not imitate. 

But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since 
it does not imitate it. Nature is the work of God ; man 
is then the rival of God. 

The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival 
of God; but it is the interpreter of him. Nature ex- 
presses him in its way, human genius expresses him in 
its own way. 

Let us stop a moment at that question so much dis- 
cussed, — whether art is anything else than the imitation 
of nature. 

Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation ; for absolute 
creation belongs only to God. Where can genius find the 
elements upon which it works, except in nature, of which 
it forms a part ? But does it limit itself to the reproduc- 
tion of them as nature furnishes them to it, without add- 
ing anything to them which belongs to itself? Is it only 
a copier of reality ? Its sole merit, then, is that of the 
fidelity of the copy. And what labour is more sterile than 
that of copying works essentially inimitable on account of 
the life with which they are endowed, in order to obtain 
an indifferent image of them ? If art is a servile pupil, 
it is condemned never to be anything but an impotent 
pupil. 

The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature ; 
but every thing in nature is not equally admirable. As 
we have just said, it has something by which it infinitely 
surpasses art — its life. Besides that, art can, in its turn, 
surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate 



ON ART. 1 73 

it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, 
is defective on some side. Every thing* that is real is im- 
perfect. Here, the horrible and the hideous are united to 
the sublime ; there, elegance and grace are separated from 
grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered 
and diverse. To re-unite them arbitrarily, to borrow from 
such a face a mouth, eyes from such another, without any 
rule that governs this choice and directs these borrowings, 
is to compose monsters ; to admit a rule, is already to 
admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this 
ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying 
nature. Without nature, he never would have conceived 
this ideal ; but with this ideal, he judges nature herself, 
rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure himself with 
her. 

The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contempla- 
tion. Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly 
purified by reflection and vivified by sentiment, it warms 
genius and inspires it with the irresistible need of seeing 
it realized and living. For this end, genius takes in 
nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to 
them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his 
chisel upon the docile marble, makes of them works that 
have no model in nature, that imitate nothing else than 
the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in some sort a 
second creation inferior to the first in individuality and 
life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on 
account of the intellectual and moral beauty with which 
it is impressed. 

Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This 
foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art 
disengages it, and gives to it forms more transparent. On 



17-i LECTURE EIGHTH. 

this account, art, when it knows well its power and its 
resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it 
may have the advantage. 

Let us establish well the end of art : it is precisely 
where its power lies. The end of art is the expression of 
moral beauty, by the aid of physical beauty. The latter 
is only a symbol of the former. In nature, this symbol is 
often obscure : — art in bringing it to light attains effects 
that nature does not always produce. Nature may please 
more, for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable de- 
gree what makes the great charm of imagination and 
sight — life ; art touches more, because in expressing, 
above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly 
to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more 
pathetic than nature, and the pathetic is the sign and 
measure of great beauty. 

Two extremes are equally dangerous — a lifeless ideal, 
or the absence of the ideal. Either we copy the model, 
and are wanting in true beauty, or we work de tete, and 
fall into an ideality without character. Genius is a ready 
and sure perception of the right proportion in which the 
ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. 
This union is the perfection of art : — chefs-d'oeuvre are 
produced by observing it. 

It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in 
teaching art. It is asked whether pupils should begin 
with the study of the ideal or the real. I do not hesitate 
to answer, — by both. Nature herself never offers the 
general without the individual, nor the individual without 
the general. Every figure is composed of individual traits 
which distinguish it from all others, and make its own 



ON ART. 175 

looks, and, at the same time, it has general traits which 
constitute what is called the human figure. These gene- 
ral traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure 
is the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning 
in the art of design to trace. It would also be good, I 
believe, in order to preserve him from the dry and ab- 
stract, to exercise him early in copying some natural 
object, especially a living figure. This would be putting 
pupils to the true school of nature. They would thus 
become accustomed never to sacrifice either of the two 
essential elements of the beautiful, either of the two impe- 
rative conditions of art. 

But, in uniting these two elements, these two condi- 
tions, it is necessary to distinguish them, and to know 
how to put them in their place. There is no true ideal 
without determinate form; there is no unity without 
variety, no genus without individuals; but, in fine, the 
foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is 
before all, the realization of the idea, and not the imita- 
tion of such or such a particular form. 

At the commencement of our century, the Institute of 
France offered a prize for the best answer to the follow- 
ing question : Wliat were the causes of the perfection of the 
antique sculpture, and ivhat would be the best means of at- 
taining it? The successful competitor, M. Emeric David, 1 
maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assidu- 
ous study of natural beauty had alone conducted the an- 
tique art to perfection, and that thus the imitation of 
nature was the only route to reach the same perfection. 
A man whom I do not fear to compare with Winklemann, 

1 Rechcrchcs sur V Art Statuaire . Paris, 1805. 



1?() LECTURE EIGHTH. 

the future author of the Olympic Jupiter? M. Quatremere 
de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions, 2 
combatted tlie doctrine of the laureate, and defended the 
cause of ideal beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate 
more decidedly, by the entire history of Greek sculpture, 
and by authentic texts from the greatest critiques of an- 
tiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was not 
the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, 
or by several, the most beautiful model being always 
very imperfect, and several models not being able to com- 
pose a single beauty. The true process of the Greek art 
was the representation of an ideal beauty which nature 
scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it 
could not then offer to the artist. We regret that the 
honourable laureate, since become a member of the Insti- 
tute, pretended that this expression of ideal beauty, if it 
had been known by the Greeks, would have meant visible 
beauty, because ideal comes from sldog, which signifies only, 
according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye. 
Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive in- 
terpretation of the word sldog. M. Quatremere de Quincy 
confounds his unequal adversary by two admirable texts, 
one from the Timceus, where Plato marks with precision 
in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary artist, 
the other at the commencement of the Orator, where 
Cicero explains the manner in which great artists work, 
in referring to the manner of Phidias, that is to say, the 



1 Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist even when 
time shall have destroyed some of its details. 

2 Since reprinted under the title of Essais sur V Ideal dans ses Applica- 
tions Pratiques. Paris, 1837. 



ON ART. ] 77 

most perfect master of the most perfect epoch of art. 

" The artist, 1 who, with eye fixed upon the immutable 
being, and using such a model, reproduces its idea and its 
excellence, cannot fail to produce a whole whose beauty 
is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye upon what is 
transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing 
beautiful/' 

" Phidias, 2 that great artist, when he made the form of 
Jupiter or Minerva, did not contemplate a model a re- 
semblance of which he would express; but in the depth 
of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty, upon which he 
fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art." 

Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which 
Raphael describes in the famous letter to Castiglione, 
which he declares that he followed himself for the Gala- 
tea? 3 " As," he says, " I am destitute of beautiful models, 
I use a certain ideal which I form for myself." 

There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, 
to imitation : it is that which makes illusion the end of 
art. If this theory be true, the ideal beauty of painting is 
a tromp-l'ceil,* and its master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis 
that the birds came and pecked at. The height of art in 
a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that you are 
in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion 

1 Translation of Plato, vol. xii., Timaeits, p. 116. 

2 Orator: — '•' Xeque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faceret Jovis for- 
mara aut Minervse, contemplabatur aliqueni a quo similitudinem duceret ; 
sed ipsius in mente insidebat species pulcbritudinis eximia quaedam, quam 
intuens, in eaque defixus, ad illius shnilitudinem artem et manum dirige- 
bat." 

3 Raccolta di lett. Sulla pitt., i., p. 83. " Essendo carestia e de' buoni 
giudid e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi xiene alia mente." 

4 " A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects painted 
on the canvass, by which the eye is deceived." 



178 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

is, that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of 
being life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is 
not to put on the stage pale phantoms of the past, but 
personages borrowed from imagination or history, as you 
like, but animated, endowed with passion, speaking and 
acting like men, and not like shades. It is human 
nature that is to be represented to itself under a magic 
light that does not disfigure it, but ennobles it. This 
magic is the very genius of art. It lifts us above the 
miseries that besiege us, and transports us to regions 
where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose 
sight of ourselves, but where we find ourselves trans- 
formed to our advantage, where all the imperfections of 
reality have given place to a certain perfection, where the 
language that we speak is more equal and elevated, where 
persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admit- 
ted, and all this while duly respecting history, especially 
without ever going beyond the imperative conditions of 
human nature. Has art forgotten human nature? it has 
passed beyond its end, it has not attained it ; it has 
brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for 
our soul. Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it 
has fallen short of its end; it has then attained it no 
better. 

Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be com- 
plete and have no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, 
theatrical men have taken great pains in these latter 
times to secure historical accuracy of costume. This is 
all very well; but it is not the most important thing. 
Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part 
of Brutus, the very costume that of old the Roman hero 
wore, it would touch true connoisseurs very little. This 



ON ART. 179 

is not all; when the illusion goes too far, the sentiment 
of art disappears in order to give place to a sentiment 
purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed 
that Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immo- 
lated by her father at a distance of twenty paces from me, 
I should leave the theatre trembling with horror. If the 
Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne who 
is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic 
scene where the poor woman, who already feels herself 
less loved, asks who then robs her of the heart, once so 
tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young Englishman 
did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the 
stage, "It is Phedre, it is Phedre!" as if he would warn 
and save Ariadne. 

But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite 
pity and terror ? Yes ; but at first in a certain measure ; 
then he must mix with them some other sentiment that 
tempers them, or makes them serve another end. If the 
aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest 
degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of 
nature. All the misfortunes represented on the stage are 
very feeble in comparison with those sad spectacles which 
we may see every day. The first hospital is fuller of pity 
and terror than all the theatres in the world. What 
should the poet do in the theory that we combat ? He 
should transfer to the stage the greatest possible reality, 
and move us powerfully by shocking our senses with the 
sight of frightful pains. The great resort of the pathetic 
would then be the representation of death, especially 
that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there 
is an end of art when sensibility is too much excited. To 
take, again, an example that we have already employed, 



180 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

what constitutes the beauty of a tempest, of a shipwreck? 
What attracts us to those great scenes of nature? It is 
certainly not pity and terror, — these poignant and lacera- 
ting sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An 
emotion very different from these is necessary, which 
triumphs over us, in order to retain us by the shore ; this 
emotion is the pure sentiment of the beautiful and the 
sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the 
spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the 
foaming waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. 
But do we think for a single instant that there are in the 
midst of the sea the unfortunate who are suffering, and 
are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment the 
spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. 
Whatever sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must 
always be tempered and governed by that of the beauti- 
ful. If it only produces pity or terror beyond a certain 
limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts, and no 
longer charms ; it loses the effect that belongs to it in 
exchange for a foreign and vulgar effect. 

For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory 
which, confounding the sentiment of the beautiful with 
the moral and religious sentiment, puts art in the service 
of religion and morals, and gives it for its end to make us 
better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential 
distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral 
beauty, if the ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infi- 
nite, art, which expresses ideal beauty, purifies the soul 
in elevating it towards the infinite, that is to say, towards 
God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the soul, but 
it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investi- 
gates effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate 



ON ART. 181 

principle of the beautiful and its certain, although re- 
mote effects. But the artist is before all things an 
artist ; what animates him is the sentiment of the beauti- 
ful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the 
spectator is the same sentiment that fills his own. He 
confides himself to the virtue of beauty; he fortifies it 
with all the power, all the charm of the ideal ; it must 
then do its own work; the artist has done his when he 
has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment 
of beauty. This pure and disinterested sentiment is a 
noble ally of the moral and religious sentiments; it 
awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it is a dis- 
tinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on 
this sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, 
is in its turn an independent power. It is naturally 
associated with all that ennobles the soul, with morals and 
religion; but it springs only from itself. 

Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper 
limits. In vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, 
and the particular end of art, we do not intend to separate 
it from religion, from morals, from country. Art draws 
its inspirations from these profound sources, as well as 
from the ever open source of nature. But it is not less 
true that art, the state, religion, are powers which have 
each their world apart and their own effects; they mutu- 
ally help each other; they should not serve each other. 
As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs, and 
is degraded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders 
of religion and the state ? In losing its liberty, it loses 
its charm and its empire. 

Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited 
as triumphant examples of what the alliance of art, reli- 



i 82 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

gion, and the state can do. Nothing is more true, if the 
question is concerning their union ; nothing is more false, 
if the question is concerning the servitude of art. Art in 
Greece was so little the slave of religion, that it little by 
little modified the symbols, and, to a certain extent, the 
spirit itself, by its free representations. There is a long 
distance between the divinities that Greece received from 
Egypt and those of which it has left immortal exemplars. 
Are those primitive artists and poets, as Homer and De- 
dalus are called, strangers to this change ? And in the 
most beautiful epoch of art, did notiEschylus and Phidias 
carry a great liberty into the religious scenes which they 
exposed to the gaze of the people, in the theatre, or in 
front of the temples ? In Italy as in Greece, as every- 
where, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods and 
governments ; but, as it increases in importance and is 
developed, it more and more conquers its liberty. Men 
speak of the faith that animated the artists and vivified 
their works ; that is true of the time of Giotto and 
Ciambue ; but after Angelico de Fiesole, at the end of 
the fifteenth century, in Italy, I perceive especially the 
faith of art in itself and the worship of beauty. Raphael 
was about to become a cardinal ; l yes, but always paint- 
ing Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once 
more, let us exaggerate nothing ; let us distinguish, not 
separate ; let us unite art, religion, and country, but let 
not their union injure the liberty of each. Let us be 
thoroughly penetrated with the thought, that art is also 
to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to us 
by the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the 
idea of the beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, 

1 Vassari, Vie de Raphael. 



ON ART. 183 

because it comes from him. True beauty is ideal beauty, 
and ideal beauty is a reflection of the infinite. So, inde- 
pendently of all official alliance with religion and morals, 
art is by itself essentially religious and moral ; for, far 
from wanting its own law, its own genius, it everywhere 
expresses in its works eternal beauty. Bound on all 
sides to matter by inflexible laws, working upon inani- 
mate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon 
words of limited and finite signification, art communicates 
to them, with the precise form that is addressed to such 
or such a sense, a mysterious character that is addressed 
to the imagination and the soul, takes them away from 
reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into unknown 
regions. Every work of art, whatever may be its form, 
small or great, figured, sung, or uttered, — every work of 
art, truly beautiful or sublime, throws the soul into a 
gentle or severe reverie that elevates it towards the infi- 
nite. The infinite is the common limit after which the 
soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as 
reason, by the route of the sublime and the beautiful, as 
well as by that of the true and the good. The emotion 
that the beautiful produces turns the soul from this world ; 
it is the beneficent emotion that art procures for humanity. 



184. 



LECTURE IX. 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 



Expression is the general law of art. — Division of arts. — Distinction be- 
tween liberal arts and trades. — Eloquence itself, philosophy, and history 
do not make a part of the fine arts. — That the arts gain nothing by 
encroaching upon each other, and usurping each other's means and pro- 
cesses. — Classification of the arts : — its true principle is expression.— 
Comparison of arts with each other. — Poetry the first of arts. 

A resume of the last lecture would be a definition of 
art, of its end and law. Art is the free reproduction of 
the beautiful, not of a single natural beauty, but of 
ideal beauty, as the human imagination conceives it 
by the aid of data which nature furnishes it. The 
ideal beauty envelops the infinite : — the end of art is, 
then, to produce works that, like those of nature, or even 
in a still higher degree, may have the charm of the infi- 
nite. But how and by what illusion can we draw the 
infinite from the finite ? This is the difficulty of art, and 
its glory also. What bears us towards the infinite in na- 
tural beauty ? The ideal side of this beauty. The ideal is 
the mysterious ladder that enables the soul to ascend from 
the finite to the infinite. The artist, then, must devote him- 
self to the representation of the ideal. Every thing has its 
ideal. The first care of the artist will be, then, whatever 
he does, to penetrate at first to the concealed ideal of his 
subject, — for his subject has an ideal, — in order to render 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 185 

it, in the next place, more or less striking to the senses 
and the soul, according to the conditions which the very 
materials that he employs — the stone, the colour, the 
sound, the language — impose on him. 

So, to express the ideal of the infinite in one way or an- 
other, is the law of art ; and all the arts are such only by 
their relation to the sentiment of the beautiful and the infi- 
nite which they awaken in the soul, by the aid of that high 
quality of every work of art that is called expression. 

Expression is essentially ideal: what expression tries 
to make felt, is not what the eye can see and the hand 
touch, evidently it is something invisible and impalpable. 

The problem of art is to reach the soul through the 
body. Art offers to the senses forms, colours, sounds, 
words, so arranged that they excite in the soul, concealed 
behind the senses, the inexpressible emotion of beauty 

Expression is addressed to the soul as form is addressed 
to the senses. Form is the obstacle of expression, and, at 
the same time, is its imperative, necessary, only means. 
By working upon form, by bending it to its service, by 
dint of care, patience, and genius, art succeeds in convert- 
ing an obstacle into a means. 

By their object, all arts are equal ; all are arts only 
because they express the invisible. It cannot be too 
often repeated, that expression is the supreme law of art. 
The thing to express is always the same, — it is the idea, 
the spirit, the soul, the invisible, the infinite. But, as 
the question is concerning the expression of this one and 
the same thing, by addressing ourselves to the senses 
which are diverse,' the difference of the senses divides art 
into different arts. 

Wc have seen, that, of the five senses which have been 

i 



186 LECTURE NINTH. 

given to man, 1 three — taste, smell, and touch — are inca- 
pable of producing in us the sentiment of beauty. Joined 
to the other two, they may contribute to the understand- 
ing of this sentiment ; but alone and by themselves they 
cannot produce it. Taste judges of the agreeable, not of 
the beautiful. No sense is less allied to the soul and 
more in the service of the body ; it flatters, it serves the 
grossest of all masters, the stomach. If smell sometimes 
seems to participate in the sentiment of the beautiful, it 
is because the odour is exhaled from an object that is 
already beautiful, that is beautiful for some other reason. 
Thus the rose is beautiful for its graceful form, for the 
varied splendour of its colours; its odour is agreeable, it is 
not beautiful. Finally, it is not touch alone that judges 
of the regularity of forms, but touch enlightened by sight. 

There remain two senses to which all the world con- 
cedes the privilege of exciting in us the idea and the sen- 
timent of the beautiful. They seem to be more particu- 
larly in the service of the soul. The sensations which 
they give have something purer, more intellectual. They 
are less indispensable for the material preservation of the 
individual. They contribute to the embellishment rather 
than to the sustaining of life. They procure us pleasures 
in which our personality seems less interested and more 
self-forgetful. To these two senses, then, art should be 
addressed, is addressed, in fact, in order to reach the soul. 
Hence the division of arts into two great classes, — arts 
addressed to hearing, arts addressed to sight ; on the one 
hand, music and poetry ; on the other, painting, with en- 
graving, sculpture, architecture, gardening. 

It will, perhaps, seem strange that we rank among the 
arts neither eloquence, nor history, nor philosophy. 

1 Lecture 6. 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 187 

The arts are called the fine arts, because their sole ob-. 
ject is to produce the disinterested emotion of beauty, 
without regard to the utility either of the spectator or 
the artist. They are also called the liberal arts, because 
they are the arts of free men and not of slaves, which af- 
franchise the soul, charm and ennoble existence; hence the 
sense and origin of those expressions of antiquity, artes 
liberates, artes ingenuce. There are arts without nobility, 
whose end is practical and material utility; they are called 
trades, such as that of the stove-maker and the mason. 
True art may be joined to them, may even shine in them, 
but only in the accessories and the details. 

Eloquence, history, philosophy, are certainly high em- 
ployments of intelligence ; they have their dignity, their 
eminence, which nothing surpasses, but rigorously speak- 
ing, they are not arts. 

Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the 
soul of the auditors the disinterested sentiment of beauty. 
It may also produce this effect, but without having sought 
it. Its direct end, which it can subordinate to no other, 
is to convince, to persuade. Eloquence has a client which 
before all it must save or make triumph. It matters 
little, whether this client be a man, a people, or an idea. 
Fortunate is the orator if he elicits the expression: That 
is beautiful ! for it is a noble homage rendered to his 
talent; unfortunate is he if he does not elicit this, for he 
has missed his end. The two great types of political and 
religious eloquence, Demosthenes in antiquity, Bossuet 
among the moderns, think only of the interest of the 
cause confided to their genius, the sacred cause of country 
and that of religion ; whilst at bottom Phidias and 
Raphael work to make beautiful things. Let us hasten 



1 88 LECTURE NINTH. 

to say, what the names of Demosthenes and Bossuet 
command us to say, that true eloquence, very different 
from that of rhetoric, disdains certain means of success; 
it asks no more than to please, but without any sacrifice 
unworthy of it; every foreign ornament degrades it. Its 
proper character is simplicity, earnestness — I do not 
mean affected earnestness, a designed and artful gravity, 
the worst of all deceptions — I mean true earnestness, that 
springs from sincere and profound conviction. This is 
what Socrates understood by true eloquence. 1 

As much must be said of history and philosophy. The 
philosopher speaks and writes. Can he, then, like the 
orator, find accents which make truth enter the soul, 
colours and forms that make it shine forth evident and 
manifest to the eyes of intelligence? It would be betray- 
ing his cause to neglect the means that can serve it; but 
the profoundest art is here only a means, the aim of phi- 
losophy is elsewhere; whence it follows that philosophy is 
not an art. Without doubt, Plato is a great artist ; he is 
the peer of Sophocles and Phidias, as Pascal is sometimes 
the rival of Demosthenes and Bossuet; 2 but both would 
have blushed if they had discovered at the bottom of their 
soul another design, another aim than the service of truth 
and virtue. 

History does not relate for the sake of relating ; it does 
not paint for the sake of painting ; it relates and paints 
the past that it may be the living lesson of the future. 
It proposes to instruct new generations by the experience 
of those who have gone before them, by exhibiting to 

1 See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation of Plato. 

' 2 There is a Provincial that for vehemence can be compared only to the 
Philipics, and its fragment on the infinite has the grandeur and magnifi- 
cence of Bossuet. See our work on the Thoughts of Pascal, 4th Series, 
lAtcratwre, vol. i. 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 189 

them a faithful picture of great and important events, 
with their causes and their effects, with general designs 
and particular passions, with the faults, virtues, and 
crimes that are found mingled together in human things. 
It teaches the excellence of prudence, courage, and great 
thoughts profoundly meditated, constantly pursued, and 
executed with moderation and force. It shows the vanity 
of immoderate pretensions, the power of wisdom and 
virtue, the impotence of folly and crime. Thucydides, 
Polybius, and Tacitus undertake anything else than pro- 
curing new emotions, for an idle curiosity or a worn-out 
imagination; they doubtless desire to interest and attract, 
but more to instruct; they are the avowed masters of 
statesmen and the preceptors of mankind. 

The sole object of art is the beautiful. Art abandons 
itself as soon as it shuns this. It is often constrained to 
make concessions to circumstances, to external conditions 
that are imposed upon it; but it must always retain a 
just liberty. Architecture and the art of gardening are 
the least free of arts; they are subjected to unavoidable 
obstacles; it belongs to the genius of the artist to govern 
these obstacles, and even to draw from them happy effects, 
as the poet turns the slavery of metre and rhyme into a 
source of unexcepted beauties. Extreme liberty may 
carry art to a caprice which degrades it, as chains too 
heavy crush it. It is the death of architecture to subject 
it to convenience, to comfort. Is the architect obliged to 
subordinate general effect and the proportions of the edi- 
fice to such or such a particular end that is prescribed to 
him ? He takes refuge in details, in pediments, in friezes, in 
all the parts that have not utility for a speeial object, and 
in them he becomes a true artist. Sculpture and painting, 



190 LECTURE NINTH. 

especially music and poetry, are freer than architecture 
and the art of gardening. One can also shackle them, 
but they disengage themselves more easily. 

Similar by their common end, all the arts differ by the 
particular effects which they produce, and by the processes 
which they employ. They gain nothing by exchanging 
their means and confounding the limits that separate 
them. I bow before the authority of antiquity ; but, per- 
haps, through habit and a remnant of prejudice, I have 
some difficulty in representing to myself with pleasure 
statues composed of several metals, especially painted 
statues. 1 Without pretending that sculpture has not to a 
certain point its colour, that of perfectly pure matter, 
that especially Which the hand of time impresses upon it, 
in spite of all the seductions of a contemporaneous 2 artist 
of great talent, I have little taste, I confess, for that arti- 
fice that is forced to give to marble the morbidezza of 
painting. Sculpture is an austere muse ; it has its graces, 
but they are those of no other art. Flesh-colour must 
remain a stranger to it : there would nothing more remain 
to communicate to it but the movement of poetry and 
the indefiniteness of music! And what will music gain 
by aiming at the picturesque, when its proper domain is 
the pathetic? Give to the most learned symphonist a 
storm to render. Nothing is easier to imitate than the 
whistling of the winds and the noise of thunder. But by 
what combinations of harmony will he exhibit to the eyes 
the glare of the lightning rending all of a sudden the 
veil of the night, and, what is most fearful in the tempest, 

1 See the Jupiter Olympien of M. Quatremere de Quincy. 

2 Allusion to the Maydeleine of Canova, which was then to be seen in the 
gallery of M. de Sommariva, 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 1.91 

the movement of the waves that now ascend like a moun- 
tain, now descend and seem to precipitate themselves into 
bottomless abysses? If the auditor is not informed of the 
subject, he will never suspect it, and I defy him to distin- 
guish a tempest from a battle. In spite of science and 
genius, sounds cannot paint forms. Music, when w T ell 
guided, will guard itself from contending against the im- 
possible ; it will not undertake to express the tumult and 
strife of the waves and other similar phenomena ; it will 
do more : with sounds it will fill the soul with the sentiments 
that succeed each other in us during the different scenes of 
the tempest. Haydn will thus become 1 the rival, even the 
vanquisher of the painter, because it has been given to music 
to move and agitate the soul more profoundly than painting. 

Since the Laocoon of Lessing, it is no longer permitted 
to repeat, without great reserve, the famous axiom, — Ut 
pictura poesis; or, at least, it is very certain that paint- 
ing cannot do every thing that poetry can do. Everybody 
admires the picture of Rumour, drawn by Virgil; but let 
a painter try to realize this symbolic figure ; let him re- 
present to us a huge monster with a hundred eyes, a hun- 
dred mouths, and a hundred ears, whose feet touch the 
earth, whose head is lost in the clouds, and such a figure 
will become very ridiculous. 

So the arts have a common end, and entirely different 
means. Hence the general rules common to all, and par- 
ticular rules for each. I have neither time nor space to 
enter into details on this point. I limit myself to repeat- 
ing, that the great law which governs all others, is expres- 
sion. Every work of art that does not express an idea 
signifies nothing ; in addressing itself to such or such a 

1 See the Tempest of Haydn, among the pianoforte works of this master. 



192 LECTURE NINTH. 

sense, it must penetrate to the mind, to the soul, and bear 
thither a thought, a sentiment capable of touching or 
elevating it. From this fundamental rule all the others 
arc derived; for example, that which is continually and 
justly recommended, — composition. To this is parti- 
cularly applied the precept of unity and variety. But, in 
saying this, we have said nothing so long as we have not 
determined the nature of the unity of which we would 
speak. True unity, is unity of exprsssion, and variety is 
made only to spread over the entire work the idea or the 
single sentiment that it should express. It is useless to 
remark, that between composition thus defined, and what 
is often called composition, as the symmetry and arrange- 
ment of parts according to artficial rules, there is an abyss. 
True composition is nothing else than the most powerful 
means of expression. 

Expression not only furnishes the general rules of art, 
it also gives the principle that allows of their classification. 

In fact, every classification supposes a principle that 
serves as a common measure. 

Such a principle has been sought in pleasure, and the 
first of arts has seemed that which gives the most vivid 
joys. But we have proved that the object of art is not 
pleasure : — the more or less of pleasure that an art pro- 
cures cannot, then, be the true measure of its value. 

This measure is nothing else than expression. Expres- 
sion being the supreme end, the art that most nearly ap- 
proaches it is the first of all. 

All true arts are expressive, but they are diversely so. 
Take music; it is without contradiction the most pene- 
trating, the profoundest, the most intimate art. There is 
physically and morally between a sound and the soul a 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 193 

marvellous relation. It seems as though the soul were an 
echo in which the sound takes a new power. Extraordi- 
nary things are recounted of the ancient music. And it must 
not be believed that the greatness of effect supposes here 
very complicated means. No, the less noise music makes, 
the more it touches. Give some notes to Pergolese, give him 
especially some pure and sweet voices, and he returns 
a celestial charm, bears you away into infinite spaces, 
plunges you into ineffable reveries. The peculiar power 
of music is to open to the imagination a limitless career, 
to lend itself with astonishing facility to all the moods of 
each one, to arouse or calm, with the sounds of the sim- 
plest melody, our accustomed sentiments, our favourite 
affections. In this respect music is an art without a 
rival : — however it is not the first of arts. 

Music pays for the immense power that has been given 
it ; it awakens more than any other art the sentiment of 
the infinite, because it is vague, obscure, indeterminate in 
its effects. It is just the opposite art to sculpture, which 
bears less tow T ards the infinite, because everything in it is 
fixed with the last degree of precision. Such is the force 
and at the same time the feebleness of music, that it ex- 
presses every thing and expresses nothing in particular. 
Sculpture, on the contrary, scarcely gives rise to any reverie, 
for it clearly represents such a thing and not such another. 
Music does not paint, it touches ; it puts in motion ima- 
gination, not the imagination that re-produces images, 
but that which makes the heart beat, for it is absurd to 
limit imagination to the domain of images. 1 The 
heart, once touched, moves all the rest of our being ; thus 
music, indirectly, and to a certain point, can recall images 

1 See lecture 6. 



194 LECTURE NINTH. 

and ideas ; but its direct and natural power is neither on 
the representative imagination nor intelligence, it is on 
the heart, and that is an advantage sufficiently beautiful. 
The domain of music is sentiment, but even there its 
power is more profound than extensive, and if it expres- 
ses certain sentiments with an incomparable force, it ex- 
presses but a very small number of them. By way of 
association, it can awaken them all, but directly it pro- 
duces very few of them, and the simplest and the most 
elementary, too, — sadness and joy with their thousand 
shades. Ask music to express magnanimity, virtuous 
resolution, and other sentiments of this kind, and it will 
be just as incapable of doing it, as of painting a lake or a 
mountain. Is goes about it as it can; it employs the 
slow, the rapid, the loud, the soft, etc., but imagination 
has to do the rest, and imagination does only what it 
pleases. The same measure reminds one of a mountain, 
another of the ocean ; the warrior finds in it heroic inspi- 
rations, the recluse religious inspirations. Doubtless, 
words determine musical expression, but the merit then 
is in the word, not in the music; and sometimes the word 
stamps the music witli a precision that destroys it, and 
deprives it of its proper effects — vagueness, obscurity, mono- 
tony, but also fulness and profundity, I was about to say 
infinitude. I do not in the least admit that famous defi- 
nition of song : — a noted declamation. A simple declama- 
tion rightly accented is certainly preferable to stunning 
accompaniments ; but to music must be left its character, 
and its defects and advantages must not be taken away 
from it. Especially it must not be turned aside from its ob- 
ject, and there must not be.demanded from it what it could 
not give. It is not made to express complicated and fac- 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 195 

titious sentiment, nor terrestrial and vulgar sentiments. 
Its peculiar charm is to elevate the soul towards the in 
finite. It is therefore naturally allied to religion, especi- 
ally to that religion of the infinite, which is at the same 
tiuie the religion of the heart; it excels in transporting 
to the feet of eternal mercy the soul trembling on the 
wings of repentance, hope, and love. Happy are those, 
who, at Rome, in the Vatican, 1 during the solemnities of 

1 I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the religious music of 
the Vatican. Therefore, T shall let a competent judge, M. Quatremere 
de Quincy, speak, Considerations Morales sur le Destination des Ouvrages de 
I'Art, Paris, 1S15, p. 98 : "Let one call to mind those chants so simple 
and so touching, that terminate at Eome the funereal solemnities of those 
three days which the Church particularly devotes to the expression of its 
grief, in the last week of Lent. In that nave where the genius of Michael 
Angelo has embraced the duration of ages, from the wonders of creation 
to the last judgment that must destroy its works, are celebrated, in the 
presence of the Roman pontiff, those nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, 
symbols, and plaintive liturgies seem to be so many figures of the mystei-y of 
grief to which they are consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, 
at the termination of each psalm, you would say that a funereal veil is 
extended little by little over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful 
light of the last lamp allows you to perceive nothing but Christ in the dis- 
tance, in the midst of cloud3, pronouncing his judgments, and some angel 
executors of his behests. Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to 
the regard of the profane, is heard the psalm of the penitent king, to 
which three of the greatest masters of the art have added the modu- 
lations of a simple and pathetic chaunt. No instrument is mingled 
with those accents. Simple harmonies of voice execute that music; but 
these voices seem to be those of angels, and their effect penetrates the 
depths of the soul." 

We have cited this beautiful passage — and we could have cited many 
others, even superior to it — of a man now forgotten, and almost always mis- 
understood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us indicate, at 
least, the last pages of the same production, on the necessity of leaving the 
works of art in the place for which they were made, for example, the por- 
trait of Mile, de Valliere in the Madeleine aux Carmelites, instead of 
transferring it to, and exposing it in the apartments of Versailles, "the 
only place in the world," eloquently says M. Quatremere, " which never 
should have 3eeu it." 



196* LECTURE NINTH. 

the Catholic worship, have heard the melodies of Leo, 
Durante, and Pergolese, on the old consecrated text ! 
They have entered heaven for a moment, and their souls 
have been able to ascend thither without distinction of 
rank, country, even belief, by those invisible and myste- 
rious steps, composed, thus to speak, of all the simple, 
natural, universal sentiments, that everywhere on earth 
draw from the bosom of the human creature a sigh to- 
wards another world ! 

Between sculpture and music, those two opposite ex- 
tremes, is painting, nearly as precise as the one, nearly as 
touching as the other. Like sculpture, it marks the 
visible forms of objects, but adds to them life; like music, 
it expresses the profoundest sentiments of the soul, and 
expresses them all. Tell me what sentiment does not 
come within the province of the painter? He has entire 
nature at his disposal, the physical world, and the moral 
world, a churchyard, a landscape, a sunset, the ocean, the 
great scenes of civil and religious life, all the beings of 
creation, above all, the figure of man, and its expression, 
that living mirror of what passes in the soul. More pa- 
thetic than sculpture, clearer than music, painting is ele- 
vated, in my opinion, above both, because it expresses 
beauty more under all its forms, and the human soul in 
all the richness and variety of its sentiments. 

But the art par excellence, that which surpasses all 
others, because it is incomparably the most expressive, is 
poetry. 

Speech is the instrument of poetry ; poetry fashions it to 
its use, and idealizes it, in order to make it express ideal 
beauty. Poetry gives to it the charm and power of mea- 
sure ; it makes of it something intermediary between the 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 197 

ordinary voice and music, something at once material and 
immaterial, finite, clear, and precise, like contours and forms 
the most definite, living and animated like colour, pathetic 
and infinite like sound. A word in itself, especially a word 
chosen and transfigured by poetry, is the most energetic 
and universal symbol. Armed with this talisman, poetry 
reflects all the images of the sensible world, like sculpture 
and painting ; it reflects sentiment like painting and 
music, with all its varieties, which music does not attain, 
and in their rapid succession that painting cannot follow, 
as precise and immobile as sculpture ; and it not only ex- 
presses all that, it expresses what is inaccessible to every 
other art, I mean thought, entirely distinct from the 
senses and even from sentiment, — thought that has no 
forms, — thought that has no colour, that lets no sound 
escape, that does not manifest itself in any way, — 
thought in its highest flight, in its most refined abstrac- 
tion. 

Think of it. "Wliat a world of images, of sentiments, of 
thoughts at once distinct and confused, are excited within 
us by this one word — country ! and by this other word, brief 
and immense, — God ! What is more clear and altogether 
more profound and vast ! 

Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the 
musician, to call forth also by a single stroke all the 
powers of nature and the soul ! They cannot, and by 
that they acknowledge the superiority of speech and 
poetry. 

They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for 
their own measure ; they esteem their own works, and 
demand that they should be esteemed, in proportion as 
they approach the poetic ideal. And the human race 



198 LECTURE NINTn. 

docs as artists do : a beautiful picture, a noble melody, a 
living and expressive statue, gives rise to the exclamation — 
How poetical ! This is not an arbitrary comparison ; it 
is a natural judgment which makes poetry the type of the 
perfection of all the arts, — the art par excellence, which 
comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none 
can reach. 

When the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, 
they usually err, losing their own genius, without rob- 
bing poetry of its genius. But poetry constructs according 
to its own taste palaces and temples, like architecture ; it 
makes them simple or magnificent ; all orders, as well as 
all systems, obey it ; the different ages of art are the same 
to it ; it reproduces, if it pleases, the classic or the Gothic, 
the beautiful or the sublime, the measured or the infinite. 
Lessing has been able, with the exactest justice, to com- 
pare Homer to the most perfect sculptor ; with such pre- 
cision are the forms which that marvellous chisel gives to 
all beings determined ! And what a painter, too, is 
Homer ! and, of a different kind, Dante ! Music alone has 
something more penetrating than poetry, but it is vague, 
limited, and fugitive. Besides its clearness, its variety, 
its durability, poetry has also the most pathetic accents. 
Call to mind the w^ords that Priam utters at the feet of 
Achilles while asking him for the dead body of his son, 
more than one verse of Virgil, entire scenes of the Cid 
and the Polyeucte, the prayer of Esther kneeling before 
the Lord, the choruses of Esther and Athalie. In the ce- 
lebrated song of Pergolese, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, we may 
ask which moves most, the music or the words. The Dies 
ira3, Dies ilia, recited only, produces the most terrible 
effect. In those fearful words, every blow tells, so to 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 199 

speak ; each word contains a distinct sentiment, an idea 
at once profound and determinate. The intellect advances 
at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn. Human 
speech idealized by poetry has the depth and brilliancy of 
musical notes; it is luminous as well as pathetic ; it speaks 
to the mind as well as to the heart; it is in that inimitable, 
unique, and embraces all extremes and all contraries in a 
harmony that redoubles their reciprocal effect, in which, 
by turns, appear and are developed, all images, all senti- 
ments, all ideas, all the human faculties, all the inmost 
recesses of the soul, all the forms of things, all real and 
all intelligible worlds ! 



200 



LECTURE X. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



Expression not only sei-ves to appreciate the different arts, but the diffe- 
rent schools of art. Example : — French art in the seventeenth century. 
French poetry : — Corneille. Racine. Moliere. La Fontaine. Boileau. — 
Painting : — Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain. Champagne. — Engraving. — 
Sculpture : — Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet. — Le N6ti*e. — 
Architecture. 



We believe that we have firmly established that all 
kinds of beauty, although most dissimilar in appearance, 
may, when subjected to a serious examination, be reduced 
to spiritual and moral beauty; that expression, therefore, 
is at once the true object and the first law of art; that all 
arts are such only so far as they express the idea concealed 
under the form, and are addressed to the soul through 
the senses; finally, that in expression the different arts 
find the true measure of their relative value, and the most 
expressive art must be placed in the first rank. 

If expression judges the different arts, does it not natu- 
rally follow, that by the same title it can also judge the 
different schools which, in each art, dispute with each 
other the empire of taste ? 

There is not one of these schools that does not repre- 
sent in its own way some side of the beautiful, and we are 
disposed to embrace all in an impartial and kindly study. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 20J 

We are eclectics in the arts as well as in metaphysics. 
But, as in metaphysics, the knowledge of all systems, and 
the portion of truth that is in each, enlightens without 
enfeebling our convictions ; so in the history of arts, while 
holding the opinion that no school must be disdained, that 
even in China some shade of beauty can be found, our 
eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the senti- 
ment of true beauty and the supreme rule of art. What 
we demand of the different schools, without distinction of 
time or place, what we see in the south as well as in the 
north, at Florence, Rome, Venice, and Seville, as well as 
at Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris, — wherever there are 
men, is something human, is the expression of a senti- 
ment or an idea. 

A criticism that should be founded on the principle of 
expression, would somewhat derange, it must be confessed, 
received judgments, and would carry some disorder into 
the hierarchy of the renowned. We do not undertake 
such a revolution; we only propose to confirm, or at least 
elucidate our principle by an example, and by an exam- 
ple that is at our hand. 

There is in the world a school formerly illustrious, now 
very lightly treated: — this school is the French school of 
the seventeenth century. We would replace it in honour, 
by recalling attention to the qualities that make its glory. 

We have worked with constancy to reinstate among us 
the philosophy of Descartes, unworthily sacrificed to the 
philosophy of Locke, because with its defects it possesses 
in our view the incomparable merit of subordinating 
the senses to the mind, of elevating and ennobling 
man. So we profess a serious and reflective admiration 
for our national art of the seventeenth century, because, 



-02 LECTURE TENTH. 

without disguising* what is wanting to it, we find in it 
what we prefer to every tiling else, grandeur united to 
good sense and reason, simplicity and force, genius of 
composition, especially that of expression. 

France, careless of her glory, does not appear to have 
the least notion that she reckons in her annals perhaps the 
greatest century of humanity, that which embraces the 
greatest number of extraordinary men of every kind. 
When, I pray you, have politicians like Henry IV., Riche- 
lieu, Mazarin, Colbert, Louis XIV. been seen giving each 
other the hand ? I do not pretend that each of them has 
no rival, even superiors. Alexander, Ca?sar, Charlemagne, 
perhaps excel them. But Alexander has but a single con- 
temporary that can be compared with him, his father 
Philip ; Caesar cannot even have suspected that Octavius 
would one day be worthy of him; Charlemagne is a colos- 
sus in a desert; whilst among us these five men succeed 
each other without an interval, press upon each other, 
and have, thus to speak, a single soul. And by what 
officers were they served! Is Conde really inferior to 
Alexander, Hannibal, and Csesar ; for among his prede- 
cessors we must not look for other rivals? Who among 
them surpasses him in the extent and justness of his con- 
ceptions, in quickness of sight, in rapidity of manoeuvres, 
in the union of impetuosity and firmness, in the double 
glory of taker of cities and gainer of battles ? Add that 
he dealt with generals like Merci and William, that he 
had under him Turenne and Luxemburg, without speak- 
ing of so many other soldiers who were reared in that 
admirable school, and at the hour of reverse still sufficed 
to save France. 

What other time, at least among the moderns, has seen 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 20o 

flourishing together so many poets of the first order? 
We have, it is true, neither Homer, nor Dante, nor Milton, 
nor even Tasso. The epic, with its primitive simplicity, 
is interdicted us. But in the drama we scarcely have 
equals. It is because dramatic poetry is the poetry that 
is adapted to us, moral poetry par excellence, which repre- 
sents man with his different passions armed against each 
other, the violent contentions between virtue and crime, 
the freaks of fortune, the lessons of providence, and in a 
narrow compass, too, in which the events press upon each 
other without confusion, in which the action rapidly pro- 
gresses towards the crisis that must reveal what is most 
intimate to the heart of the personages. 

Let us dare to say what we think, that, in our opinion, 
^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, together, do not equal 
Corneille ; for none of them has known and expressed 
like him what is of all things most truly touching, a great 
soul at war with itself, between a generous passion and 
duty. Corneille is the creator of a new pathetic unknown 
to antiquity and to all the moderns before him. He dis- 
dains to address common and subaltern passions ; he does 
not seek to rouse terror and pity, as demands Aris- 
totle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims the 
practice of the Greeks. Corneille seems to have read 
Plato, and followed his precepts: — he addresses a most 
elevated part of human nature, the noblest passion, the 
one nearest virtue, — admiration; and from admiration 
carried to its calumination he draws the most powerful 
effects. Shakspeare, we admit, is superior to Corneille 
in extent and richness of dramatic genius. Entire human 
nature seems at his disposal, and he reproduces the diffe- 
rent scenes of life in their beauty and deformity, in their 



20-i LECTURE TENTH. 

grandeur and baseness. He excels in painting the terri- 
ble or the gentle passions. Othello is jealousy, Lady 
Macbeth is ambition, as Juliet and Desdemona are the 
immortal names of youthful and unfortunate love. But 
if Corneille has less imagination, he has more soul. Less 
varied, he is more profound. If he does not put upon the 
stage so many different characters, those that he does 
put on it are the greatest that can be offered to humanity. 
The scenes that he gives are less heart-rending, but at 
once more delicate and more sublime. What is the melan- 
choly of Hamlet, the grief of King Lear, even the disdain- 
ful intrepidity of Caesar, in comparison with the magna- 
nimity of Augustus striving to be master of himself as 
well as the universe, in comparison with Chimene sacri- 
ficing love to honour, especially in comparison with 
Pauline, not suffering even at the bottom of her heart an 
involuntary sigh for the one that she must not love? 
Corneille always confines himself to the highest regions. 
He is by turns Roman and Christian, tie is the inter- 
preter of heroes, the chanter of virtue, the poet of war- 
riors and politicians. 1 And it must not be forgotten that 
Shakspeare is almost alone in his times, whilst after Cor- 
neille comes Racine, who would suffice for the poetical 
glory of a nation. 

Racine assuredly cannot be compared with Corneille 
for dramatic genius ; he is more the man of letters ; he 
has not the tragic soul ; he neither loves nor understands 
politics and war. When he imitates Corneille, for example, 
in Alexander, and even in Mithridates, he imitates him 
badly enough. The scene, so vaunted, of Mithridates ex- 

1 One is reminded of the expression of the great Conde' : " Where then 
has Corneille learned politics and war ?" 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 205 

posing his plan of campaign to his sons is a morsel of 
the finest rhetoric, which cannot be compared with the 
political and military scenes of Cinna and Sertorius, 
especially with that first scene of the Death of Pompey, 
in which you witness a counsel as true, as grand, as pro- 
found as ever could have been one of the counsels of 
Richelieu or Mazarin. Racine was not born to paint 
heroes, but he paints admirably man with his natural 
passions, and the most natural as well as the most touch- 
ing of all, love. So he particularly excels in feminine 
characters. For men, he has need of being sustained by 
Tacitus or holy Scripture. 1 With women he is at his ease, 
and he makes them think and speak with perfect truth, 
set off by exquisite art. Demand of him neither Emilie, 
Cornelie, nor Pauline ; but listen to Andromaque, Moni- 
me, Berenice, and Phedre ! There, even in imitating, he 
is original, and leaves the ancients very far behind him. 
Who has taught him that charming delivery, those grace- 
ful troubles, that purity even in feebleness, that melan- 
choly, sometimes even that depth, with that marvellous 

1 It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original 
all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus ; in them Racine 
would almost always be found below his model. I will give a single ex- 
ample. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus expresses 
the different effects of the crime on the spectators : — 

Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits ; 
La mortis s'epouvante et sort avec des cris; 
Mais ceux qui de la cour out un plus long usage 
Sur les yeux de C^3ar composent leur visage. 

Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more 
than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil- 
strokes of the great Roman painter: " Trepidatur a circumsedentibus, 
diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus, resistunt defixi et 
Xeronem intuentes." 



206 LECTURE TENTH. 

language which seems the natural accent of woman's 
heart? It is continually repeated that Racine wrote bet- 
ter than Corneille: — say only that the two wrote very 
differently, and like men in very different epochs. One 
has two sovereign qualities, which belong to his own na- 
ture and his times, naivete and grandeur, the other is not 
native, but he has too much taste not to be always simple, 
and he supplies the place of grandeur, for ever lost, with 
consummate elegance. Corneille speaks the language of 
statesmen, soldiers, theologians, philosophers, and clever 
women; of Richelieu, Rohan, Saint-Cyran, Descartes, and 
Pascal; of mother Angelique Arnaud and mother Made- 
leine de Saint-Joseph; the language which Moliere still 
spoke, which Bossuet preserved to his last breath. Racine 
speaks that of Louis XIV. and the women who were the 
ornament of his court. I suppose that thus spoke Ma- 
dame, the amiable, sprightly, and unfortunate Henriette: 
thus wrote the author of the Princesse de Cleves and the 
author of Telemaque. Or, rather, this language is that of 
Racine himself, of that feeble and tender soul, which 
passed quickly from love to devotion, which uttered its 
complaints in lyric poetry, which was wholly poured out 
in the choruses of Esther and Athalie, and in the Cantiques 
Spirituels; that soul, so easy to be moved, that a religious 
ceremony or a representation of Esther at Saint-Cyr 
touched to tears, that pitied the misfortunes of the people, 
that found in its pity and its charity the courage to speak 
one day the truth to Louis XIV., and was extinguished 
by the first breath of disgrace. 

Moliere is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Cor- 
neille is, in comparison with Shakspeare. The author of 
Plutus, the Wasps, and the Clouds, has doubtless an ima- 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 207 

gi nation, an explosive buffoonery, a creative power, above 
all comparison. Moliere lias not as great poetical concep- 
tions : he has more, perhaps ; he has characters. His 
colouring is less brilliant, his graver is more penetrating. 
He has engraved in the memory of men a certain number 
of irregularities and vices which will ever be called VAvare, 
(t\\Q Miser), le Malade Imaginaire fthe Hypocondriac), 
les Femmes Savantes fthe Learned Women), le Tartufe 
f the Hypocrite), and Bon Juan, not to speak of the Mis- 
anthrope, a piece apart, touching as pleasant, which, is not 
addressed to the crowd, and cannot be popular, because it 
expresses a ridicule rare enough, excess in the passion of 
truth and honour. 

Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, 
even the ingenious, the pure, the elegant Phsedrus, ap- ■ 
proach our La Fontaine ? He composes his personages, 
and puts them in action with the skill of Moliere ; he 
knows how to take on occasion the tone of Horace, and 
mingle an ode with a fable ; he is at once the most naive, 
and the most refined of writers, and his art disappears in 
its very perfection. "We do not speak of the tales, first, 
because we condemn the kind, then, because La Fontaine 
displays in them qualities more Italian than French, a 
narrative full of nature, malice, and grace, but without 
any of those profound, tender, melancholy traits, that 
place among the greatest poets of all time the author of 
the Two Pigeons (Deux Pigeons), the Old Man (Vieil- 
lard), and the Three Young Persons (Gens). 

We do not hesitate to put Boileau among these great 
men. He comes after them, it is true, but he belongs to 
their company: he comprehends them, loves them, sus- 
tains them. It was he, who, in 1 663, after the School of 



208 LECTURE TENTH. 

Women (VEcole des Femmes), and long before the Hypo- 
crite (le Tartufe), and the Misanthrope, proclaimed Mo- 
liere the master in the art of verse. It was he who, in 
in 1677, after the failure of Phddre, defended the van- 
quisher of Euripides against the successes of Pradon. It 
was he who, in advance of posterity, first put in light 
what is new and entirely original in the plays of Corneille. 1 
He saved the pension of the old tragedian by offering the 
sacrifice of his own. Louis XIV. asking him what writer 
most honoured his reign, Boileau answered, that it was 
Moliere ; and when the great king in his decline perse- 
cuted Port-Royal, and wished to lay hands on Arnaud, he 
encountered a man of letters, who said to the face of the 
imperious monarch, — " Your Majesty in vain seeks M. 
Arnaud, you are too fortunate to find him." Boileau is 
somewhat wanting in imagination and invention ; but he 
is great in the energetic sentiment of truth and justice ; 
he carries to the extent of passion taste for the beautiful 
and the honest ; he is a poet by force of soul and good 
sense. More than once his heart dictated to him the most 
pathetic verses : — 

" In vain against the Cid a minister is leagued, 2 
All Paris for Chimene has the eyes of Podrique," etc. 

" After a little spot of earth, obtained by prayer, 
For ever in the tomb had enclosed Moliere," etc. 



1 See the letter to Perrault. 
3 En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue, 

Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Podrique, etc. 



Apres qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par priere, 

Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enferme* Moliere, etc. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 209 

And this epitaph of Arnaud, so simple, and so grand : : — 

" At the feet of this altar of structure gross, 
Lies without pomp, enclosed in a coffin vile, 
The most learned mortal that ever wrote; 
Arnaud, who in grace instructed by Jesus Christ, 
Combatting for the Church, has, in the Church itself, 
Suffered more than one outrage and more than one anathema, " etc. 

'•'Wandering, poor, banished, proscribed, persecuted; 
And even by his death their ill-extinguished rage 
Had never left his ashes in repose, 
If God himself here by his holy flock 
From these devouring wolves had not concealed his bones." 2 

These are, I think, poets sufficiently great, and we have 
more of them still : I mean those charming or sublime 
minds who have elevated prose to poetry. Greece alone, 
in her most beautiful days, offers, perhaps, such a variety 
of admirable prose writers. Who can enumerate them? 
At first, Rabelais and Montaigne; later, Descartes, Pascal, 
and Malebranche; La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere; Retz 
and Saint-Simon ; Bourdaloue, Flechier, Fenelon, and 
Bossuet ; add to these so many eminent women, at their 

1 Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossiere, 
Git sans pompe, enferme dans une vile biere, 
Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait e"crit ; 
Arnaud, qui sur la grace instruit par Je^us-Christ, 
Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglirie merae, 
Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un auatheine, etc. 

Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persecute"; 

Et meme par sa mort leur fureur mal e"teinte 

N'aurait jamais laisse" se3 cendres en repos, 

Si Dieu lui-meme ici de son ouaille sainte 

A ces loups deVorants n'avait cache" les os. 
2 These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and they 
are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rosseau, in a letter to Brossette, 
rightly said that these are " the most beautiful verses that M. Despreaux 
ever made." 

K 



210 LECTURE TENTH. 

head Madame de Sevigne; while Montesquieu, Voltaire, 
Rosseau, and Buffon are still to come. 1 

By what strange diversity could a country, in which the 
mental arts were carried to such perfection, remain ordi- 
nary in the other arts? Was the sentiment of the beauti- 
ful wanting, then, to that society so polished, to that 
magnificent court, to those great lords and those great 
ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, to that 
public of the elite, enamoured of every kind of glory, 
whose enthusiasm defended the Cid against Richelieu? 
No ; France in the seventeenth century was a whole, and 
produced artists that she can place by the side of her 
poets, her philosephers, her orators. 

But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to 
comprehend them. 

We do not believe that imagination has been less freely 
imparted to France than to any other nation of Europe. 
It has even had its reign among us. It is fancy that rules 
in the sixteenth century, and inspires the literature and 

1 4th Series of our works, Literature, book i., Preface, p. 3: — " It is 
in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain. . . . What 
modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation ? 
The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a 
single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and 
Tasso, is in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly diction, like 
the thought that it expresses, is destitute of grandeur. Spain, it is true, 
has produced Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he is alone. . . . 
France can easily show a list of more than twenty prose writers of genius: 
Froissard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, 
Moliei-e, Retz, La Bruyere, Malebranche, Bossuet, Fenelon, Fle'chier, 
Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mme. de Se'veigne', Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Vol- 
taire, Buffon, J. J. Rosseau; without speaking of so many more that would 
be in the first rank everywhei*e else, — Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubigne", 
Cliarron, Balzac, Vaugelas, Pelisson, Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, 
Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, 
Hamilton, Le Sage, Prevost, Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said 



FRENCH ART IX THE. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 211 

the arts of the Renaissance. But a great revolution inter- 
vened at the commencement of the seventeenth century. 
France at that moment seems to pass from youth to viri- 
lity. Instead of abandoning imagination to itself, we 
apply ourselves from that moment to restrain it without 
destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did, by the 
aid of taste ; as in the progress of life and society we learn 
to repress or conceal what is too individual in character- 
An end is made of the literature of the preceding age. A 
new poetry, a new prose, begin to appear, which, during 
an entire century, bear fruits sufficiently beautiful. Art 
follows the general movement ; after having been elegant 
and graceful, it becomes in its turn serious ; it no longer 
aims at originality and extraordinary effects ; it neither 
flashes nor dazzles ; it speaks, above all, to the mind 
and the soul. Hence its good qualities and also its de- 
fects. In general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy 
and colouring, but it is in the highest degree expressive. 

Some time since we have changed all that. We have 
discovered, somewhat late, that we have not sufficient 

with the exactest truth, that French prose is without a rival in modern 
Europe; and, even in antiquity, superior to the Latin prose, at least in the 
quantity and variety of models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in 
its palmiest days, in the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not 
prefer Demosthenes to Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato 
himself above Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two 
greatest masters of human language, with manifest differences, as well as 
more than one trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the people, 
with the last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending without effort 
to a poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious and polished to the 
most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and sublime. Plato, 
without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme serenity, and, as it 
were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on his side, has the 
pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. When such 
writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the honour that 
is their due, that of a regular and profound study ?" 



212 LECTURE TENTH. 

imagination ; we are in training to acquire it, it is true, at 
the expense of reason, alas ! also at the expense of soul, 
which is forgotten, repudiated, proscribed. At this mo- 
ment, colour and form are the order of the day, in poetry, 
in painting, in every thing. We are beginning to run mad 
with Spanish painting. The Flemish and Venetian schools 
are gaining ground on the schools of Florence and Rome. 
Rossini equals Mozart, and Grluck will soon seem to us 
insipid. 

Young artists, who, rightly disgusted with the dry and 
inanimate manner of David, undertake to renovate French 
painting, who would rob the sun of its heat and splen- 
dour, remember that of all beings in the world, the great- 
est is still man, and that what is greatest in man is his 
intelligence, and above all, his heart; that it is this heart, 
then, which you must put and develop on your canvass. 
This is the most elevated object of art. In order to reach 
it, do not make yourselves disciples of Flemings, Vene- 
tians, and Spaniards ; return, return to the masters of 
our great national school of the seventeenth century. 

We bow with respectful admiration before the schools 
of Rome and Florence, at once ideal and living ; but 
those excepted, we maintain that the French school equals 
or surpasses all others. We prefer neither Murillo, Rubens, 
Corregio, nor Titian himself to Lesueur and Poussin, be- 
cause, if the former have an incomparable hand and 
colour, our two countrymen are much greater in thought 
and expression. 

Wha ta destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur I 1 He was 
born at Paris about J 61 7, and he never went out of it. 
Poor and humble, he passed his life in the churches and 

1 See the Appendix, at the end of the volume. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 213 

convents where he worked. The only sweetness of his 
sad days, his only consolation, was his wife : — he loses 
her, and goes to die, at thirty-eight, in that cloister of 
Chartreux, which his pencil has immortalized. What re- 
semblance at once, and what difference between his life 
and that of Raphael, who also died young, but in the 
midst of pleasures, in honours, and already almost in 
purple ! Our Raphael was not the lover of Fornarina and 
the favourite of a pope: he was Christian; he is Chris- 
tianity in art. 

Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having 
escaped from the hands of Simon Vouet, he formed him- 
self according to the model which he had in the soul. He 
never saw the sky of Italy. He knew some fragments of 
the antique, some pictures of Raphael, and the designs 
that Poussin sent him. With these feeble resources, and 
guided by a happy instinct, in less than ten years he 
mounted by a continual progress to the perfection of his 
talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure of 
himself, he was about to produce new and more admirable 
master-pieces. Follow him from the St. Bruno completed 
in 1648, through the St. Paul of 1649, to the Vision of 
St. Benedict in 1651, and to the Muses, scarcely finished 
before his death. Lesueur went on adding to his essen- 
tial qualities which he owed to his own genius, and to the 
national genius, I mean composition and expression, 
qualities which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses 
of. His design from day to day became more pure, with- 
out ever being that of the Florentine school, and the same 
is true of his colouring. 

In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, 
every thing is in the service of the mind, every thing is 



214 LECTURE TENTH. 

idea and sentiment. There is no affectation, no manner- 
ism ; there is a perfect naivete ; his figures sometimes 
would seem even a little common, so natural are they, if a 
Divine breath did not animate them. It must not be for- 
gotten that his favourite subjects do not exact a brilliant 
colouring: he oftenest re-traces scenes mournful or austere. 
But as in Christianity by the side of suffering and resig- 
nation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the pa- 
thetic sweetness and grace ; and this man charms me at 
the same time that he moves me. 

The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes 
that demanded profound meditation, and the most flexible 
talent, in order to preserve in them unity of subject, and 
to give them variety and harmony. The History of St. 
Bruno, the founder of the order des Ghartreux, is a vast 
melancholy poem, in which are represented the different 
scenes of monastic life. The History of St. Martin and 
St. Benedict has not come down to us entire ; but the 
two fragments of it that we possess, the Mass of St. Mar- 
tin, and the Vision of St. Benedict, allow us to compare 
that great work with every better thing of the kind that 
has been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the Muses, 
and the History of Love, appear to us to equal at least the 
Farnesina. 

In the History of St. Bruno, it is particularly necessary 
to remark St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint 
reading a letter of the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is 
it possible to carry meditation, humiliation, rapture far- 
ther? St. Paul preaching at Ephesus reminds one of the 
School of Athens, by the extent of the scene, the employ- 
ment of architecture, and the skilful distribution of groups. 
In spite of the number of personages, and the diversity of 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 215 

episodes, the picture wholly centres in St. Paul. He 
preaches, and upon his words hang those who are listen- 
ing, of ever j sex, of every age, in the most varied atti- 
tudes. In that we behold the grand lines of the 
Roman school, its design full of nobleness and truth at 
the same time. What charming and grave heads ' "What 
graceful, bold, and always natural movements ! Here, that 
child with ringlets, full of naive enthusiasm ; there, that 
old man with bended knees, and hands joined. Are not 
all those beautiful heads, and those draperies, too, worthy 
of Raphael ? But the marvel of the picture is the figure 
of St. Paul, 1 — it is that of the Olympic Jupiter, animated 
by a new spirit. The Mass of St Martin carries into the 
soul an impression of peace and silence. The Vision of 
St. Benedict has the character of simplicity full of gran- 
deur. A desert, the saint on his knees, contemplating 
his sister, St. Scholastique, who is ascending to heaven, 
borne up by angels, accompanied by two young girls, 
crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the symbol 
of virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict 
the abode whither his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. 
A slight ray of the sun pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is 
as it were lifted up from the earth by this extatic vision. 
One scarcely desires a more lively colour, and the expres- 
sion is divine. Those two virgins, a little too tall, per- 
haps, how beautiful and pure they are ! How sweet are 
those forms ! How grave and gentle are those faces ! The 
person of the holy monk, with all the material accessories, 
is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth ; whilst 
his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and 
already in heaven. 

1 See the Appendix. 



216 LECTURE TENTH. 

But the chef-d'oeuvre of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the 
Descent from the Gross, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus 
Christ, already descended from the cross, whom Joseph of 
Arimathea, Nicodemus, and St. John are placing in the 
shroud. On the left, Magdalen, in tears, kisses the feet of 
Jesus; on the right, are the holy women and the Virgin. 
It is impossible to carry the pathetic farther and preserve 
beauty. The holy women, placed in front, have each their 
particular grief. While one of them abandons herself to 
despair, an immense but internal and thoughtful sadness 
is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She has 
comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the 
human race, and her grief, sustained by this thought, is 
calm and resigned. And then what dignity in that head ! 
It, in some sort, sums up the whole picture, and gives to 
it its character, that of a profound and subdued emotion. 
I have seen many Descents from the Cross; I have seen 
that of Reubens at Antwerp, in which the sanctity of the 
subject has, as it were, constrained the great Flemish 
painter to join sensibility and sentiment to colour ; none 
of those pictures have touched me like that of Lesueur. 
All the parts of art are there in the service of expression. 
The drawing is severe and strong ; even the colour, with- 
out being brilliant, surpasses that of the St. Bruno, the 
Mass of St. Martin, the St Paul, and even that of the 
Vision of St Benedict; as if Lesueur had wished to bring 
together in it all the powers of his soul, all the resources 
of his talent I 1 

Now, regard the Muses, — other scenes, other beauties, 

1 This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St. Gervais. 
It formed the altar-piece, and in the fore-ground there was the admirable 
Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 217 

the same genius. Those are Pagan pictures, but Chris- 
tianity is in them also, by reason of the adorable chastity 
with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics have 
emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor 
Lesueur fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore 
that he had not made the journey to Italy and studied 
antiquity more. But who can have the strange idea of 
searching in Lesueur for an archeology ? I seek and find 
in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsi- 
chore, well or ill named, with a harp a little too strong, 
it is said, as if the Muse had no particular gift, in her 
modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace? In that 
group of three Muses, to which one may give what name 
he pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a 
book of music, who sings or is about to sing, the most 
ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia that preludes just before 
abandoning herself to the intoxication of inspiration? 
And in those pictures there is brilliancy and colouring; 
the landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had 
guided the hand of his friend. 

Poussin ! Wliat a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the 
painter of sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. 
He is in some sort the philosopher of painting. His pic- 
tures are religious or moral lectures that testify a great 
mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to recall the 
Seven Sacraments, the Deluge, the A rcadi a, the Truth that 
Time frees from the Taints of Envy, the Will of Eudamidas, 
and the Dance of Human Life. And the style is equal to the 
conception. Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes 
like a Frenchman, and often equals Lesueur in expression; 
colouring alone is sometimes wanting to him. As well as 
Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and imitates 



218 LECTURE TENTH. 

it ; but, like Racine, lie always remains original. In place 
of the naivete and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a 
severe simplicity, with a correctness that never abandons 
him. Remember, too, that he cultivated every kind of 
painting. He is at once a great historical painter and a 
great landscape painter, — he treats religious subjects as 
well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by anti- 
quity and the Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, 
and died there ; but he also worked in France, and almost 
always for France. Scarcely had he become known, when 
Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there, 
loading him with honours, and giving him the commission 
of first painter in ordinary to the king, with the general 
direction of all the works of painting, and all the ornaments 
of the royal houses. During that sojourn of two years in 
Paris, he made the Last Supper (Gene), the St. Francois 
Xavier, the Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy. 
It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that 
from Rome he addressed the Inspiration of St. Paul, as well 
as the second series of the Seven Sacraments, an immense 
composition that, for grandeur of thought, can vie w T ith 
the Stanze of Raphael. I speak of it from the engravings; 
for the Seven Sacraments are no longer in France. Eter- 
nal shame of the eighteenth century ! It was at least 
necessary to wrest from the Greeks the pediments of the 
Parthenon, — we, we delivered up to strangers, we sold all 
those monuments of French genius which Richelieu and 
Mazarin, with religious care, had collected. Public indig- 
nation did not avert the act ! And there has not since 
been found in France a king, a statesman, to interdict 
letting the master-pieces of art that honour the nation 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. '219 

depart without authorization from the national territory! 1 
There has not been found a government which has under- 
taken at least to re-purchase those that we have lost, to get 
back again the great works of Poussin,Lesueur, and so many 
others, scattered in Europe, instead of squandering millions 
to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or 
Spanish canvasses, in truth of an admirable colour, but with- 
out nobleness and moral expression. 2 I know and I love the 
Dutch pastorals and the cows of Potter ; I am not insensi- 
ble to the sombre and ardent colouring of Zurbaran, to the 
brilliant Italian imitations of Murillo and Velasquez ; but 
in fine, what is all that in comparison with serious and 
powerful compositions like the Seven Sacraments, for ex- 
ample, that profound representation of Christian rites, a 
work of the highest faculties of the intellect and the soul, 
in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an ex- 
haustless subject of study and meditation ! Thank God, 
the graver of Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude 
and barbarity. Whilst the originals decorate the gallery 
of a great English lord, 3 the love and the talent of a Pesne, 
of a Stella, have preserved for us faithful copies in those 
expressive engravings that one never grows tired of con- 
templating, that every time we examine them, reveal to 
us some new side of the genius of our great countryman. 
Regard especially the Extreme Unction ! "What a sub- 
lime and at the same time almost graceful scene ! One 
would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are 

1 Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchised 
Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of 
civilized Europe. 

2 See the Appexdtx. 

3 The Seven Sacraments of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater Gallery. 
See the Appendix. 



220 LECTURE TENTH. 

properly distributed in it, with natural and varied atti- 
tudes. The draperies are as admirable as those of a 
fragment of the Panathenma, which is in the Louvre. 
The figures are all beautiful. Beauty of figures belongs to 
sculpture, one is about to say : — yes, but it also belongs 
to painting, if you have yourself the eye of the painter, if 
you have been struck with the expression of those pos- 
tures, those heads, those gestures, and almost those looks ; 
for every thing lives, every thing breathes, even in those 
engravings, and if it were the place, we would endeavour 
to make the reader penetrate with us into those secrets of 
Christian sentiment which are also the secrets of art. 

We endeavour to console ourselves for having lost the 
Seven Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep 
from England and Germany so many productions of Pous- 
sin, now buried in foreign collections, 1 by going to see at 
the Louvre what remains to us of the great French artist, 
— thirty pictures produced at different epochs of his life, 
which, for the most part, worthily sustain his renown, — 
the portrait of Poussin, one of the Bachanals made for 
Richelieu, Mars and Venus, the Death of Adonis, the Rape 
of the Sabines, 2 Eliezer and Rebecca, Moses saved from the 
Waters, the Infant Jesus on the Knees of the Virgin and 
St. Joseph standing by, 3 especially the Manna in the De- 
sert, the Judgment of Solomon, the Blind Men of Jericho, 

1 See the Appendix. 

2 In the midst of this scene of bnital violence, every body has remarked 
this delicate trait — a Roman quite young, almost juvenile, while possessing 
himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the arms of her mother, 
asks her from her mother with an air at once passionate and restrained. 
In order to appreciate this picture, compare it with that of David in the 
ensemble and in the details. 

3 In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He governs 
the whole scene ; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 221 

the Woman taken in Adultery, the Inspiration of St. 
Paul, the Diogenes, the Deluge, the Arcadia. Time has 
turned the colour, which was never very brilliant ; but it 
has not been able to disturb what will make them live for 
ever, — the design, the composition, and the expression. 
The Deluge has remained, and in fact will always be, the 
most striking. After so many masters who have treated 
the same subject, Poussin has found the secret of being 
original, and more pathetic than his predecessors, in re- 
presenting the solemn moment when the race is about to 
disappear. There are few details ; some dead bodies are 
floating upon the abyss ; a sinister-looking moon has 
scarcely risen ; a few moments and mankind will be no 
more ; the last mother uselessly extends her last child to 
the last father who cannot take it, and the serpent that 
has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try 
in vain to find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling 
hand : the soul that sustained and conducted that hand 
makes itself felt by our soul, and profoundly moves it. 
Stop at that scene of mourning, and almost by its side let 
your eyes rest upon that fresh landscape and upon those 
shepherds that surround a tomb. The most aged, with a 
knee on the ground, reads these words graven upon the 
stone : Et in Arcadia ego, and I also lived in Arcadia. 
At the left a shepherd listens with serious attention. At 
the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in 
the springtime of life, and a young girl of ravishing 
beauty. An artless admiration is painted on the face of 
the young peasant, who looks with happiness on his beau- 
tiful companion. As for her, her adorable face is not even 
veiled with the slightest shade ; she smiles, her hand rest- 
ing carelessly upon the shoulder of the young man, and 



2'2'2 LECTURE TENTH. 

she has no appearance of comprehending that lecture 
given to beauty, youth, and love. I confess that, for this 
picture alone, of so touching a philosophy, I would give 
many master-pieces of colouring, all, the pastorals of Potter, 
all the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries of Teniers. 

Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal 
titles, are at the head of our great painting of the seven- 
teenth century. After them, what artists again are 
Claude Lorrain and Philippe de Champagne ? 

Do you know in Italy or Holland a greater landscape 
painter than Claude ? And seize w T ell his true charac- 
ter. Look at those vast and beautiful solitudes, lighted 
by the first or last rays of the sun, and tell me whether 
those solitudes, those trees, those waters, those mountains, 
that light, that silence, — whether all that nature has a 
soul, and whether those luminous and pure horizons do 
not lift you involuntarily, in ineffable reveries, to the in- 
visible source of beauty and grace! Lorrain is, above all, 
the painter of light, and his works might be called the 
history of light and all its combinations, in small and 
great, when it is poured out over large plains or breaks 
in the most varied accidents, on land, on waters, in the 
heavens, in its eternal source. The human scenes thrown 
into one corner have no other object than to relieve and 
make appear to advantage the scenes of nature by har- 
mony or contrast. In the Village Fete, life, noise, move- 
ment are in front, — peace and grandeur are at the foun- 
dation of the landscape, and that is truly the picture. 
The same effect is in the Cattle Grossing a River. The 
landscape placed immediately under your eyes has nothing 
in it very rare, we can find such a one anywhere; but 
follow the perspective, — it leads you across flowering 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 223 

fields, a beautiful river, ruins, mountains that overlook 
these ruins, and you lose yourself in infinite dis- 
tances. That Landscape crossed by a river, where a pea- 
sant waters his herd, means nothing great at first sight. 
Contemplate it some time, and peace, a sort of meditative- 
ness in nature, a well-graduated perspective will, little by 
little, gain your heart, and give you in that small picture 
a penetrating charm. The picture called a Landscape re- 
presents a vast champagne filled with trees, and lighted 
by the rising sun, — in it there is freshness and — already — 
warmth, mystery, and splendour, with skies of the sweetest 
harmony. A Dance at Sunset expresses the close of a 
beautiful day. One sees in it, one feels in it the decline 
of the heat of the day; in the foreground are some 
shepherds and shepherdesses dancing by the side of their 
flocks. 1 

Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the 
Flemish school? 2 He was born at Brussels, it is true, 
but he came very early to Paris, and his true master was 
Poussin, who counselled him. He devoted his talent to 
France, lived there, died there, and what is decisive, his 
manner is wholly French. Will it be said that he owes to 
Flanders his colour? "We respond that this quality is 
balanced by a grave defect that he also owes to Flanders, 

1 The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just spoken, are 
in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum 
of Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England 
more than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the Appendix. 

3 The last Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Galleries of the National 
Mtuam of the Louvre, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is surely a 
man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing Champagne 
in the Flemish school. En revanche, a learned foreigner, M. Waagen, 
claims him for the French school. Kunstvierlce and kitnstler in Paru, 
Berlin, 1839, p. 651. 



224 LECTURE TENTH. 

the want of ideality in the figures; and it was from France 
that he learned how to repair this defect by beauty of 
moral expression. Champagne is inferior to Lesueur and 
Poussin, but he is of their family. He was, also, of those 
artists contemporaneous with Corneille, simple, poor, 
virtuous, Christian. 1 Champagne worked both for the 
convent of the Carmelites in the Rue St. Jacques, that 
venerable abode of ardent and sublime piety, and Port- 
Royal, that place of all others that contained in the 
smallest space the most virtue and genius, so many admi- 
rable men and women worthy of them. What has become 
of that famous crucifix that he painted for the Church of 
the Carmelites, a master-piece of perspective that upon a 
horizontal plane appeared perpendicular? It perished 
with the holy house. The Last Supper {Gene) is a living 
picture, on account of the truth of all the figures, move- 
ments, and postures; but to my eyes it is blemished by 
the absence of the ideal. I am obliged to say as much of 
the Repast with Simon the Pharisee. The chef-d'oeuvre of 
Champagne is the Apparition of St. Gervais and St. 
Protais to St. Ambrose in a Basilica of Milan. All the 
qualities of French art are seen in it, — simplicity and 
grandeur in composition, with a profound expression. On 
that canvass are only four personages, the two martyrs 

1 Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his benefits. 
One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had only to ask 
freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune, Champagne re- 
sponded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more skilful painter 
than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his Eminence ; but 
that being impossible, he only desired the honour of his good graces. Feli- 
bien, Entretiens, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171; and de Piles, Abrege de 
la Vie des Pelntrcs, 2nd edition, p. 500. — "As he had much love for justice 
and truth, provided he satisfied what they both demanded, he easily passed 
over all the rest." — Necrologe de Port-Royal, p. 336. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 225 

and St. Paul, who presents them to St. Ambrose. Those 
four figures fill the temple, lighted above all in the obscu- 
rity of the night, by the luminous apparition. The two 
martyrs are full of majesty. St. Ambrose, kneeling and 
in prayer, is, as it were, seized with terror. 1 

I certainly admire Champagne as a historical painter, 
and even as a landscape painter ; but he is perhaps 
greatest as a portrait painter. In portraits truth and 
nature are particularly in their place, relieved by colour- 
ing, and idealized in proper measure by expression. The 
portraits of Champagne are so many monuments in which 
his most illustrious contemporaries will live for ever. 
Every thing about them is strikingly real, grave, and se- 
vere, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the records 
of Port-Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in 
Champagne. Among those portraits we see the inflexible 
Saint -Cyran, 2 as well as his persecutor, the imperious 
Richelieu. 3 We see, too, the learned, the intrepid Antoine 
Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of Bossuet decreed 
the name of Great ; 4 and Mme. Angelique Arnaud, with 
her naive and strong figure. 5 Among them is mother 
Agnes and the humble daughter of Champagne himself, 
sister St. Suzanne. 6 She has just been miraculously 

1 See the Appendix. 

2 The original is in the Museum of Grenoble ; but see the engraving of 
Morin : see also that of Daret, afier the beautiful design of Demonstier. 

8 In the Museum of the Louvre ; see also the engraving of Morin. 

4 The original is now in the Chateau of Sable, belonging to the Marquis 
of Rouge' ; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The beautiful 
engraving of Edelink was made after a different original, attributed to a 
nephew of Champagne. 

5 The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Rouge* ; the 
admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place. 

6 In the Museum. 



226 LECTURE TENTH. 

cured, and her whole prostrated person bears still the 
impress of a relic of suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling 
before her, regards her with a look of grateful joy. The 
place of the scene is a poor cell ; a wooden cross hanging 
on the wall, and some straw chairs, are all the ornaments. 
On the picture is the inscription, — Christo uni medico 
animarum et corporum, etc. There is possessed the Chris- 
tian stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add 
to all these portraits that of Champagne j 1 for the painter 
may be put by the side of his personages. 

Had France produced in the seventeenth century only 
these four great artists, it would be necessary to give an 
important place to the French school ; but she counts 
many other painters of the greatest merit. Among these 
we may distinguish P. Mignard, so much admired in his 
times, so little known now, and so worthy of being known. 
How have we been able to let fall into oblivion the author 
of the immense fresco of Val-de-grdce, so celebrated by 
Moliere, which is perhaps the greatest page of painting in 
the world ! 2 "What strikes at first, in this gigantic work, 
is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charm- 
ing details and innumerable episodes which form them- 
selves important compositions. Remark also the brilliant 

1 In the Museum, and engraved by GeYard Edelinck. 

2 La Gloire du Val-de- Grace, in 4 to, 1669, with a frontispiece and vig- 
nettes. Moliere there enters into infinite details on all the parts of the art 
of painting and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy perhaps to the 
extent of hyperbole ; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to the most shame- 
ful indifference. The fresco of the dome of Val-de-Grace is composed of 
four rows of figures, which rise in a circle from the base to the vertex 
of the arch. In the upper part is the Trinity, above which is raised a 
resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are the celestial powers. Descending 
a degree, we see the virgin and the holy personages of the Old and New 
Testament. Finally, at the lower extremity is Anne of Austria, intro- 
ucjl into paradise by St. Anne and St. Louis, and these three figures 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 227 

and sweet colouring which should at least obtain favour 
for so many other beauties of the first order. Again, it 
is to the pencil of Mignard that we owe that ravishing 
ceiling of a small apartment of the King at Varsailles, a 
master-piece now destroyed, but of which there remains 
to us a magnificent translation in the beautiful engraving 
of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in the 
Plague of Aeacus, 1 and in the St. Charles giving the Com- 
munion to the Plague-infected of Milan ! Mignard is re- 
cognised as one of our best portrait painters : grace, some- 
times a little too refined, is joined in him to sentiment. 
The French school can also present with pride Valentin, 
who died young and was so full of promise ; Stella, the 
worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claudine, Antoinette, 
and Francoise Stella ; Lahyre, who has so much spirit and 
taste ; 2 Sebastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated ; 3 
the Lenains, who sometimes have the naivete of Lesueur 
and the colour of Champagne ; Bourguignon, full of fire 
and enthusiasm ; Jouvenet, whose composition is so good; 4 
finally, besides so many others, Lebrun, whom it is now 
the fashion to treat cavalierly, who received from nature, 
with perhaps an immoderate passion for fame, passion for 
the beautiful of every kind, and a talent of admirable 



are accompanied by a multitude of personages pertaining to the history of 
France, among whom are distinguished Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, etc. 

1 Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the Plague of David 
■ In pesie ( fr David). What has become of the original ? 

3 See his Landscape at Sunset, and the Bathers (les Baigneusea), an agree- 
able scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing. 

:i It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his Holy Family 
the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably expresses medi- 
tation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most important work of 
S. Bourdon, the Sept CEv.vrts de Misericorde. See the Appendix. 

4 See especially his Extreme Unction. 



228 LECTURE TENTH. 

flexibility, — the true painter of a great king by the rich- 
ness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV., 
worthily closes the seventeenth century. 1 

Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of paint- 
ing, would it not be unjust to pass in silence over engraving, 
its daughter, or its sister? Certainly it is not an art of ordi- 
nary importance ; we have excelled in it ; we have above 
all carried it to its perfection in portraits. Let us be equit- 
able to ourselves. What school — and we are not unmindful 
of those of Marc' Antonio, Albert Durer, and Rembrandt 
— can present such a succession of artists of this kind ? 
Thomas de Leu and Leonard Grautier make in some sort 
the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. 
Thenjcome a crowd of men of the most diverse talents, — 
Mellan, Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nan- 
teuil, Drevet, Van Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, 
and the Audrans. Gerard Edelinck and Nanteuil alone 
have a popular renown, and they merit it by the delicacy, 
splendour, and charm of their graver. But the connois- 
seurs of elevated taste find at least their rivals in engrav- 
ers now less admired, because they do not flatter the eye 
so much, but have, perhaps, more truth and vigour. It 
must also be said, that the portraits of these two masters 
have not the historic importance of those of their prede- 
cessors. The Conde of Nanteuil is justly admired; but if 
we wish to know the great Conde, the conqueror of Roc- 

1 The picture that is called le Silence, which represents the sleep of the 
infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the infant is of 
superhuman power. The Battles of Alexander, with their defects, are 
pages of history of the highest order ; and in the Alexander visiting with 
Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius, one knows not which to admire 
most, the noble ordering of the whole or the just expression of the figures. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 229 

roy and Lens, we must not demand him from Nanteuil, 
but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret, 1 who de- 
signed and engraved him in all his force and heroic beauty. 
Edelinck and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and re- 
traced the seventeenth century, except at the approach 
of its decline. 2 Morin and Mellan were able to see 
it, and transmit it in its glorious youth. Morin is the 
Champagne of engraving : lie does not engrave, he paints. 
It is he who represents and transmits to posterity the 
illustrious men of the first half of the great century — 
Henry IV., Louis XIII, the de Thous, Berulle, Jansenius, 
Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin, 
still young, and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor. 3 
Mellan had the same advantage. He is the first in 
date of all the engravers of the seventeenth century, and 
perhaps is also the most expressive. With a single line, 
it seems that from his hands only shades can spring ; he 
does not strike at first sight ; but the more we regard 

1 It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It is 
indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his chef- 
d'oeuvre, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, represented in 
his earliest youth, and in an abbe", sustained and surrounded by angels of 
different size, forming a charming composition. The drawing is com- 
pletely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings. The little angels 
that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are full of spirit, and, 
at the same time, sweetness. 

2 Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to 
engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the 
regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his last five or six 
years; Conde, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and Matthieu Mole, 
some years before the fall of the one and the death of the other; and he 
was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of parliamenta- 
rians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers. 

3 If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most 
neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost 
wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin. 



230 LECTURE TENTH. 

him, the more lie seizes, penetrates, and touches, like 
Lesucur. 1 

Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is 
favourable to painting, is particularly expressive. Sculp- 
ture seems to be a pagan art ; for, if it must also contain 
moral expression, it is always under the imperative con- 
dition of beauty of form. This is the reason why sculp- 
ture is as it were natural to antiquity, and appeared there 
with an incomparable splendour, before which painting 
somewhat paled, 2 whilst among the moderns it has been 
eclipsed by painting, and has remained very inferior to it, 
by reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing stone and 
marble to express Christian sentiment, without which, 
material beauty suffers; so that our sculpture is too insig- 
nificant to be beautiful, too mannered to be expressive. 
Since antiquity, there have scarcely been two schools of 
sculpture : 3 — one at Florence, before Michael Angel o, and 
especially with Michael Angelo; the other in France, at 
the Renaissance, with Jean Cousin, Groujon, Germain 
Pilon. We may say that these three artists have, as it 

1 Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of his 
time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions, many of 
which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call attention to that 
one which is at the head of a folio edition of the Introduction a la Vie De- 
rote, and to the beautiful frontispieces of the writings of Eichelieu, from 
the press of the Louvre. 

2 This was the opinion of Winklemann at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have been 
made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part re-traced and de- 
scribed in the Musio real Barbonico. 

3 There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age : the innumerable 
figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are discovered 
every day sufficiently testify it. The imagers of that time certainly had 
much spirit and imagination; but, at least in everything that we have 
Keen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 231 

were, shared among themselves grandeur and grace : to 
the first belong nobility and force, with profound know- 
ledge ; l to the other two, an elegance full of charm. Sculp- 
ture changes its character in the seventeenth century as 
well as every thing else: it no longer has the same attrac- 
tion, but it finds moral and religious inspiration, which 
the skilful masters of the Renaissance too much lacked. 
Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of them that is supe- 
rior to Jacques Sarazin ? That great artist, now almost 
forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and 
the Italian school, and to the qualities that he borrows 
from his predecessors, he adds a moral expression, touch- 
ing and elevated, which he owes to the spirit of the new 
school. He is, in sculpture, the worthy contemporary of 
Lesueur and Poussin, of Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal. 
He belongs entirely to the reign of Louis XIII. , Richelieu, 
and Mazarin ; he did not even see that of Louis XIV. 2 
Galled into France by Richelieu, who had also called there 
Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few years 
produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great 
character. "What has become of them ? The eighteenth 
century passed over them without regarding them. The 
barbarians that destroyed or scattered them, were arrested 
before the paintings of Lesueur and Poussin, protected by 
a remnant of admiration : while breaking the master- 
pieces of the French chisel, they had no suspicion of the 

1 Go and see at the Museum of "Versailles the statue of Francis I., and 
aay whether any Italian, except the author of the Laurent de Medicis, has 
made anything like it. See also in the Museum of the Louvre, the statue 
of Admiral Cliahot. 

2 Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes in 
1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not extend beyond 
that epoch. 



232 LECTURE TENTH. 

sacrilege the} 7 were commiting against art as well as their 
country. I was at least able to see, some years ago, at 
the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the piety 
of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mau- 
soleum erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second 
of the name, Prince of Conde, father of the great Condc, 
the worthy support, the skilful fellow-labourer of Riche- 
lieu and Mazarin. This monument was supported by four 
figures of natural grandeur, — Faith, Prudence, Justice, 
Charity. There were four bas-reliefs in bronze, represent- 
ing the Triumphs of Renown, Time, Death, and Eternity. 
In the Triumph of Death, the artist had represented a 
certain number of illustrious moderns, among whom he 
had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo. 1 We 
can still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the 
pavilion of the Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at 
once so majestic and so graceful, which are detached with 
admirable relief and lightness. Have Jean Goujon and 
Germain Pilon done anything more elegant and life-like ? 
Those females breathe, and are about to move. Take the 
pains to go a short distance 2 to visit the humble chapel 
that now occupies the place of that magnificent church of 
the Carmelites, once filled with the paintings of Cham- 

1 Lenoir, Musee des Monuments Francais, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the 
Musee Royal des Monuments Francais of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and 
140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the ex- 
pense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the Chambre des Comptes, 
was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in bronze. It 
must not be confounded with the other monument that the Condds erected 
to the same prince in their family burial-ground at Vallery, near Monter- 
eau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by the hand of Michel 
Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p. 23-25, and especially in 
the Annuaire de V Yonne pour 1842, p. 175, etc. 

2 Rue d'Enfer, No. 67. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 2o3 

pagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun ; where the voice of 
Bossuet was heard, where Mile, de Lavalliere and Mine. 
de Longueville were so often seen prostrated, their long- 
hair shorn, and their faces bathed in tears. Among the 
relics that are preserved of the past splendour of the holy 
monastery, consider the noble statue of the kneeling Car- 
dinal de Berulle. On those meditative and penetrating- 
features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes the soul 
of that great servant of God, who died at the altar like a 
warrior on the field of honour. He prays God for his dear 
Carmelites. That head is perfectly natural, as Cham- 
pagne might have painted it, and has a severe grace that 
reminds one of Lesueur and Poussin. 1 

Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy 
would admire, and to whom there is wanting, since the 
great century, nothing but judges worthy of them. These 
two brothers covered Paris and France with the most pre- 
cious monuments. Look at the tomb of Jacques- Auguste 
de Thou, by Francoise Anguier: the face of the great 
historian is reflective and melancholy, like that of a man 
weary of the spectacle of human things; and nothing is 
more amiable than the statues of his two wives, Marie 
Barbancon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Chatre. 2 The 
mausoleum of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Tou- 
louse in 1632, which is still seen at Moulins, in the 

1 The museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of 

zin's works, and those of very little importance : — a bust of Pierre 

Siguier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small funeral 

monument of Hennequin, Abbe of Bernay, member of Parliament, who 

died in 1661, which is a chef-d'czuvre of elegance. 

1 These three statues were united in the museum des Pettis- A ugustiiis, 
Lenoir, Mivsee-royal, etc., p. 94 ; we know not why they have been sepa- 
rated; Jacques- August de Thou has been placed in the Louvre, and his 
two wives at Versailles. 

L 



234 LECTURE TENTH. 

church of the ancient convent of the daughters of Sainte- 
Marie, is an important work of the same artist, in which 
force is manifest, with a little heaviness. 1 To Michel 
Anguier are attributed the statues of the duke and 
duchess of Trcsmes, and that of their illustrious son, 
Potier, Marquis of Gevres. 2 - Behold in him the intrepid 
companion of Conde, arrested in his course at thirty-two 
years of age before Thionville, after the battle of Rocroy, 
already lieutenant-general, and when Conde was demanding 
for him the baton of a marshal of France, deposited on his 
tomb ; behold him young, beautiful, brave, like his com- 
rades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval, Chatillon, 
La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is 
the monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, 
that faithful friend of Conde, who by the splendour of his 
valour, especially by the graces of his person, knew how 
to gain the heart, the fortune, and the name of the beauti- 
ful Marguerite, the daughter of the great Duke of Rohan. 
The new duke died, still young, in 1655, at thirty-nine 
years of age. He is represented lying down, the head in- 
clined and supported by an angel; another angel is at his 
feet. The whole is striking, and the details are exquisite. 
The face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to 

1 Francois Anguier bad made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Berulle, 
wbicb was in tbe oratory of Rue St. Honore. It would have been inte- 
resting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still at the 
Carmelites. Francois is also tbe author of the monument of tbe Longue- 
villes, which, before the Revolution, was at the Ce'lestines, and was seen 
in 1815 at the museum des Petit-Augustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 103; it is now 
in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four sides of which are covered with 
allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal, also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has 
four female figures in marble, representing the cardinal virtues. 

2 Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait, painted 
by Champagne, and engraved by Morin. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 235 

its reputation, but the beaut y is that of one dying. The 
body has already the langour of death, longuescit moriens, 
with I know not what antique grace. This morsel, if the 
drawing were more severe, would rival the Dying Gladi- 
ator, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even 
imitates. 1 

In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly 
of Puget and Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first 
order cannot be refused. He has the fire, the enthusiasm, 
the fecundity of genius. The caryatides of the Hotel de 
Ville of Toulon, which have been brought to the Museum 
of Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The Milon reminds 
one of the manner of Michel Angelo ; it is a little over- 
strained, but it cannot be denied that the effect is strik- 
ing. Do you want a talent more natural, and still having 
force and elevation? Take the trouble to search in the 
Tuilleries, in the gardens of Versailles, in several churches 
of Paris, for the scattered works of Girardon, here for 
the mausoleum of the Gondis, 2 there for that of the Cas- 
tellans, 3 that of Louvois, 4 etc.; especially go to see in the 
church of the Sorbonne the mausoleum of Richelieu. 
The formidable minister is there represented in his last 

1 Group in white marble which was at the Celestins, a church near 
the hotel of Rohan-Chabot in the Place Royale; re-collected in the Museum 
des Petits-Ai'f/ustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 97; it is now at Versailles. We must 
not pass over that beautiful production, the mausoleum of Jacques de 
Souvre", Grand Prior of France, the brother of the beautiful Marchioness 
de Sable; a mausoleum that came from Saint-Jean de Latran, passed 
through the Museum des Petits-Augustins, and is now found in the Louvre. 
The sculptures of the porte Saint-Denis are also owed to Michel Anguier, 
as well as the admirable bust of Colbert,, which is in the museum. 

2 At first at Xotre-Danie, the natural place for the tombs of the Gondis, 
then at the Augustins, now at Versailles. 

3 In the Church St. Germain des Pre"s. 

4 At the Capuchines, then at the Augustines, then at Versailles. 



236 LECTURE TENTH. 

moments, sustained by religion, and wept by his country. 
The whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure 
has the fineness, the severity, the superior distinction 
given to it by the pencil of Champagne, and the gravers 
of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan, 

Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, 
who, under the influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins 
the theatrical style, who still has the facility, movement, 
and elegance of Lebrun himself. He reared worthy 
monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and Lebrun, 1 and thus to 
speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of his time. 
For, remark it well, artists then took scarcely any arbi- 
trary and fanciful subjects. They worked upon contem- 
poraneous subjects which, while giving them proper liber- 
t} r , inspired and guided them, and communicated a public 
interest to their works. The French sculpture of the 
seventeenth century, like that of antiquity, is profoundly 
natural. The churches and the monasteries were filled 
with the statues of those who loved them during life, and 
wished to rest in them after death. Each church of 
Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences 
of the aristocracy — for at that period, there was one in 
France, like that of England at the present time — pos- 
sessed their secular tombs, statues, busts, and portraits of 
eminent men whose glory belonged to the country as well 
as their own family. On its side, the state did not en- 

1 Sec, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin 
is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of 
St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du Chardon- 
net, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little overstrained, of 
the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of Jerome Eignori, 
the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 237 

courage the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, in a small 
way ; it gave them a powerful impulse by demanding of 
them importont works, by confiding to them vast enter- 
prises. All great things were thus mingled together, re- 
ciprocally inspired and sustained each other. 

One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful 
art that surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gar- 
dens or magnificent parks, — that man is a Frenchman of 
the seventeenth century, is Le Notre. Le Notre may be 
reproached with a regularity that is perhaps excessive, and 
a little mannerism in details; but he has two qualities that 
compensate for many defects, grandeur and sentiment. 
He who designed the park of Versailles, who to the pro- 
per arrangement of parterres, to the movement of foun- 
tains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the myste- 
rious shades of groves, has known how to add the magic 
of infinite perspective by means of that spacious walk 
where the view is extended over an immense sheet of 
water to be lost in the limitless distances, — he is a land- 
scape-painter worthy of having a place by the side of 
Poussin and Lorrain. 

We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like 
all the nations of northern Europe. In the sixteenth cen- 
tury what architects were Pierre Lescot, Jean Bullant, 
and Philibert Delorme ! What charming palaces, what 
graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville of Paris, 
Chambord, and Ecouen ! The seventeenth century also 
had its original architecture, different from that of the 
middle age and that of the Renaissance, simple, austere, 
noble, like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of Des- 
cartes. Study without scholastic prejudice the Luxem- 



238 LECTUKE TENTH. 

bourg of de Brosses, 1 the portal of Saint-Gervais, and the 
great hall of the Palais de Justice, by the same architect; 
the Palais Cardinal and the Sorbonne of Lemercier ; 2 the 
cupola of Val-de-Grace by Lemuet ; 3 the triumphal arch 
of the Porte Saint-Deni3 by Francois Blondel ; Versailles, 
and especially the Invalides, of Mansart. 4 Consider with 
attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on 
your mind and soul, and you will easily succeed in recog- 
nising in it a particular beauty. It is not a Gothic monu- 
ment, neither is it an almost Pagan monument of the six- 
teenth century, — it is modern, and also Christian; it is vast 
with measure, elegant with gravity. Contemplate at 
sunset that cupola reflecting the last rays of day, elevat- 
ing itself gently towards the heavens in a slight and 
graceful curve ; cross that imposing esplanade, enter 
that court admirably lighted in spite of its covered galleries, 
bow beneath the dome of that church where Vauban and 
Turenne sleep, — you will not be able to guard yourself 
from an emotion at once religious and military ; you will 

1 Quatremere de Quincy, Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus 
Celebres Architectes, vol. ii., p. 145: — "There could scarcely be found in 
any country an ensemble so grand, which offers with so much unity and 
regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially in the 
facade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has disappeared, thanks 
to the constructions that have since been added to the primitive work. 

2 In order to appreciate the beanty of the Sorbonne, one must stand in 
the lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the effect of 
the successive elevation, at first of the other part of the court, then of the 
different stories of the portico, then of the portico itself, of the church, and, 
finally, of the dome. 

3 Quartremere de Quincy, Ibid., p. 257: — "The cupola of this edifice is 
one of the finest in Europe." 

4 We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault, because, 
in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks the passage 
from the serious to the academic style, from originality to imitation, from 
the seventeenth century to the eighteenth. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 239 

say to yourself that this is indeed the asylum of warriors 
who have reached the evening of life and are prepared for 
eternity ! 

Since then, what has French architecture become? 
Once having left tradition and national character, it wan- 
ders from imitation to imitation, and without comprehend- 
ing the genius of antiquity, it unskilfully reproduces its 
forms. This bastard architecture, at once heavy and 
mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the beautiful 
architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere 
effaces the vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a 
striking example of it? In Paris, near the Luxembourg, 
the Condes had their hotel, 1 magnificent and severe, with 
a military aspect, as it was fitting for the dwelling-place 
of a family of warriors, and within of almost royal splen- 
dour. Beneath those lofty ceilings had been some time 
suspended the Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In those 
vast saloons had been assembled the elite of the grandest 
society that ever existed. In those beautiful gardens had 
been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de Sevigne, 
Moliere, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the 
great Conde. The oratory had been painted by the hand 
of Lesueur. 2 It had been easy to repair and preserve the 

1 See the engraving of Pe'relle. Sauval, vol., ii., p. 66 and p. 131, says 
that the hotel of Conde' vvas magnificently built, that it was the most magni- 
ficent of t fie time. 

2 Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the Appendix): 
— " Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Conde", Charlotte- 
Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an oratory 
painted by Lesueur in the hotel of Conde". The altar-piece represents a 
Nativity, that of the ceiling a Celestial Glory. The wainscot is enriched 
with several figures and with a quantity of ornaments worked with great 
care." 



240 LECTURE TENTH. 

noble habitation. At the end of the eighteenth century, 
a descendant of the CondeV sold it to a dismal company 
to build that palace without character and taste which is 
called the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the same epoch there 
was a movement made to construct a church to the patron- 
ess of Paris, to that Genevieve, whose legend is so touching 
and so popular. Was there ever a better chance for anational 
and Christian monument ? It was possible to return to the 
Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of 
that there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of 
the Decline. What a dwelling for the modest and holy 
virgin, so dear to the fields that bordered upon Lutece, 
whose name is still venerated by the poor people who in- 
habit these quarters ! Behold the church which has been 
placed by the side of that of Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if 
to make felt all the differences between Christianity and 
Paganism ! For here, in spite of a mixture of the most 
different styles, it is evident that the Pagan style predomi- 
nates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in this 
profane edifice, which has so many times changed its des- 
tination. It is in vain to call it anew Saint-Genevieve, — 
the revolutionary name of Pantheon will stick to it. 1 The 
eighteenth century treated the Madeleine no better than 
Saint-Genevieve. In vain the beautiful sinner wished 
to renounce the joys of the world and attach herself to 

1 The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is it- 
self a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of the 
Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the bill of St. Genevieve, from 
which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on different sides to a 
considerable distance. Put in its place the Val-de-Grace of Lemercier with 
the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edi- 
fice ! 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 24] 

the poverty of Jesus Christ. She has been brought back 
to the pomp and luxury that she repudiated; she has 
been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold, which 
might very well be a temple of Yenus, for certainly it has 
not the severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the 
most vulgar copy. How far we are from the Invalides, 
from Val-de-Grace, and the Sorbonne, so admirably 
appropriated to their object, wherein appears so well the 
hand of the century and the country which reared 
them ! 

While architecture thus strays, it is natural that paint- 
ing should seek above every thing colour and brilliancy, 
that sculpture should apply itself to become Pagan again, 
that poetry itself, receding for two centuries, should abjure 
the worship of thought for that of fancy, that it should 
everywhere go borrowing images from Spain, Italy, and 
Germany, that it should run after subaltern and foreign 
qualities which it will not attain, and abandon the grand 
qualities of the French genius. 

It will be said that the Christian sentiment which ani- 
mated Lesueur and the artists of the seventeenth century 
is wanting to those of ours ; it is extinguished, and cannot 
be rekindled. In the first place, is that very certain ? 
Native faith is dead, but cannot reflective faith take its 
place ? Christianity is exhaustless ; it has infinite re- 
sources, and admirable flexibility ; there are a thousand 
ways of arriving at it and returning to it, because it has 
itself a thousand phases that answer to the most different 
dispositions, to all the wants,to all the mobility of the heart. 
What it loses on one side, it gains on another ; and as it 



242 LECTURE TENTH 

has produced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all 
its vicissitudes. Either every religion will perish in this 
world, or Christianity will endure, for it is not in -the 
power of thought to conceive a more perfect religion. Ar- 
tists of the nineteenth century, do not despair of God and 
yourselves. A superficial philosophy has thrown you far 
from Christianity considered in a strict sense ; another 
philosophy can bring you near it again by making you 
see it with another eye. And then, if the religious senti- 
ment is weakened, are there not other sentiments that can 
make the heart of man beat, and fecundate genius ? Plato 
lias said, that beauty is always old and always new. It 
is superior to all its forms, it belongs to all countries and 
all times ; it belongs to all beliefs, provided these beliefs 
be serious and profound, and the need be felt of express- 
ing and spreading them. If, then, we have not arrived at 
the boundary assigned to the grandeur of France, if we 
are not beginning to descend into the shade of death, if 
we still truly live, if there remain to us convictions, of what- 
ever kind they may be, thereby even remains to us, or at 
least may remain to us, what made the glory of our fathers, 
what they did not carry with them to the tomb, what had 
already survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle 
Age, what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral 
accident, what subsists and is continually found in the 
focus of consciousness, I mean moral inspiration, immortal 
as the soul. 

Let us terminate here, and sum "up this defence of the 
national art. There are in arts, as well as in letters and 
philosophy, two contrary schools. One tends to the ideal 
in all things, — it seeks, it tries to make appear the spirit 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 243 

concealed under the form, at once manifested and veiled 
by nature ; it does not so much wish to please the senses 
and natter the imagination as to enlarge the intellect and 
move the soul. The other, enamoured of nature, stops 
there and devotes itself to imitation, — its principal object 
is to reproduce reality, movement, life, which are for it 
the supreme beauty. The France of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, the France of Descartes, Corneille, and Bossuet, 
highly spiritual in philosophy, poetry and eloquence, was 
also highly spiritual in the arts. The artists of that great 
epoch participate in its general character, and represent 
it in their way. It is not true that they lacked imagina- 
tion, more than Pascal and Bossuet lacked it. But in as 
much as they do not suffer imagination to usurp the do- 
minion that does not belong to it, in as much as they sub- 
ject its order, even its impetuosity, to the reign of reason 
and the inspirations of the heart, it seems that it is not so 
strong when it is only disciplined and regulated. As we 
have said, they excel in composition, especially in expres- 
sion. They always have a thought, and a moral and ele- 
vated thought. For this reason they are dear to us, their 
cause interests us, is in some sort our own cause, and so 
this homage rendered to their misunderstood glory natur- 
ally crowns these lectures devoted to true beauty, that is 
to say, moral beauty. 

May these lectures be able to make it known, and, above 
all, loved ! May they be able also to inspire some one of 
you with the idea of devoting himself to studies so beau 
tiful, of devoting to them his life, and attaching to them 
his name ! The sweetest recompense of a professor who 
is not too unworthy of that title is to see rapidly following 



244 LECTURE TENTH. 

in his footsteps young and noble spirits who easily pass 
him and leave him far behind them. 1 

1 In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouf- 
froy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the faculte des lettres, 
in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouf- 
froy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teach- 
ing might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or 
later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire 
domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eus- 
tache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet pos- 
sesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for 
a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to 
the necessity of addi-essing to him the public petition that he may not be 
wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated. 



PAET TRIED, 



THE GOOD. 
LECTURE XI. 

PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 

Extent of the question of the good. — Position of the question according to 
the psychological method : What is, in regard to the good, the natural 
belief of mankind? — The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought 
in a pretended state of nature. — Study of the sentiments and ideas of 
men in languages, in life, in consciousness. — Disinterestedness and devo- 
tedness. — Liberty. — Esteem and contempt. — Respect. — Admiration and 
indignation. — Dignity. — Empire of opinion. — Ridicule. — Regret and 
Repentance. — Natural and necessary foundations of all justice. — Dis- 
tinction between fact and right. — Common sense, true and false philo- 
sophy. 

The idea of the true in its developments, comprises 
psychology, logic, and metaphysics. The idea of the 
beautiful begets what is called aesthetics. The idea of the 
good is the whole of ethics. 

It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics 
to confine them within the enclosure of individual con- 
sciousness. There are public ethics, as well as private 
ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the relations of 



246 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

men among themselves, so far as men, their relations 
as citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend 
wherever is found in any degree the idea of the good. 
Now, where does this idea manifest itself more, and where 
do justice and injustice, virtue and crime, heroism and 
weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil 
life? Moreover, is there anything that has a more deci- 
sive influence over manners, even of individuals, than 
the institutions of peoples and the constitutions of states ? 
If the idea of the good goes thus far, it must be followed 
thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has intro- 
duced us into the domain of art. 

Philosophy usurps no foreign power ; but it is not dis- 
posed to relinquish its right of examination over all the 
great manifestations of human nature. All philosophy 
that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly worthy of the 
name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in gene- 
ral views on society and government, are powerless ethics, 
that have neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in 
its most difficult trials. 

It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the 
metaphysics and aesthetics that we have taught evidently 
involve such a doctrine of morality and not such another, 
that, accordingly, the question of the good, that question 
so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and that we 
can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is 
derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory 
of the true. We might do this, perhaps, but we will 
not. This would be abandoning the method that we have 
hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by observa- 
tion, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experi- 
ence a law to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 247 

Let us attach ourselves faithfully to the psychological 
method ; it has its delays; it condemns us to more than 
one repetition, but it places us in the beginning, and a 
long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all 
light. 

The first maxim of the psychological method is this : 
True philosophy invents nothing,? it establishes and de- 
scribes what is. Now here, Avhat is, is the natural and 
permanent belief of the being that we are studying, to 
wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the 
natural anc> permanent belief of the human race ? Such 
is, in our eyes, the first question. 

With us, in fact, the human race does not take one 
side, and philosophy the other. Philosophy is the inter- 
preter of the human race. What the human race thinks 
and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy re-collects, 
explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete 
expression of human nature, and human nature is entire 
in each of us philosophers, and in every other man. Among 
us, it is attained by consciousness; among other men, it 
manifests itself in their words and actions. Let us, then, 
interrogate the latter and the former; let us especially 
inteiTogate our own consciousness ; let us clearly recog- 
nise what the human race thinks; we shall then see what 
should be the office of philosophy. 

Is there a human language known to us that has not 
different expressions for good and evil, for just and un- 
just? Is there any language, in which, by the side of the 
words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not also 
found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, 
virtue? Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak 
of liberty, duty, and right ? 



'2 i-8 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius 
will ask us whether, in this regard, we possess authentic 
dictionaries of the language of savage tribes found by 
voyagers in the isles of the ocean? No; but we have not 
made our philosophic religion out of the superstitions and 
prejudices of a certain school. We absolutely deny that 
it is necessary to study human nature in the famous savage 
of Aveyron, or in the like of him of the isles of the ocean, 
or the American continent. The savage state offers us 
humanity in swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ of 
humanity, but not humanity entire. The true man is the 
perfect man of his kind ; tine human nature is human 
nature arrived at its development, as true society is also 
perfected society. We do not think it worth the while to 
ask a savage his opinion on the Apollo Belvidere, neither 
will we ask him for the principles that constitute the 
moral nature of man, because in him this moral nature is 
only sketched and not completed. Our great philosophy 
of the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too 
much pleased with hypotheses in which God plays the 
principal part, and crushes human liberty. 1 The philo- 
sophy of the eighteenth century threw itself into the 
opposite extreme ; it had recourse to hypotheses of a 
totally different character, among others, to a pretended 
natural state, whence it undertook, with infinite pains, to 
draw society and man as we now see them. Rousseau 
plunged into the forests, in order to find there the model 
of liberty and equality. That is the commencement of his 
politics. But wait a little, and soon you will see the 
apostle of the natural state, driven, by a necessary incon- 

1 See 2nd Series, vol. ii., lect. 11 and 12 ; 4th Series, vol. ii., last pages 
of Jacqueline Pascal, and the Fragments of the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 469. 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 249 

sequence, from one excess to an opposite excess, instead 
of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing to us the 
Contrat Social and Lacedemone. Condillac 1 studies the 
human mind in a statue whose senses enter into exer- 
cise under the magic wand of a systematic analysis, 
and are developed in the measure and progress that are 
convenient to him. The statue successively acquires our 
live senses, but there is one thing that it does not acquire, 
that is a mind like the human mind, and a soul like ours. 
And this was what was then called the experimental 
method ! Let us leave there all those hypotheses. In 
order to understand reality, let us study it, and not 
imagine it. Let us take humanity as it is incontestably 
shewn to us in its actual characters, and not as it may 
have been in a primitive, purely hypothetical state, in 
those unformed lineaments or that degradation which is 
called the savage state. In that, without doubt, may be 
found signs or souvenirs of humanity, and, if this were the 
plea, we might, in our turn, examine the recitals of 
voyages, and find, even in that darkness of infancy or 
decrepitude, admirable flashes of light, noble instincts, 
which already appear, or still subsist, presaging or recall- 
ing humanity. But, for the sake of exactness of method 
and true analysis, we turn our eyes from infancy and the 
savage state, in order to direct them towards the being 
who is the sole object of our studies, the actual man, the 
real and completed man. 

Do you know a language, a people, which does not 
possess the word disinterested virtue ! "Who is espe- 
cially called an honest man ? Is it the skilful calculator, 
devoting himself to making his own affairs the best 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, Condillac. 



-50 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

possible, or he who, under all circumstances, is disposed 
to observe justice against his apparent or real interest? 
Take away the idea that an honest man is capable, to a 
certain degree, of resisting the attractions of personal 
interest, and of making some sacrifices for opinion, for 
propriety, for that which is or appears honest, and you 
take away the foundation of that title of honest man, even 
in the most ordinary sense. That disposition to prefer 
what is good to our pleasure, to our personal utility, in a 
word, to interest — that disposition more or less strong, 
more or less constant, more or less tested, measures 
the different degrees of virtue. A man who carries 
disinterestedness as far as devotion, is called a hero, 
let him be concealed in the humblest condition, or 
placed on a public stage. There is devotcdness in obscure 
as well as in exalted stations. There are heroes of probity, 
of honour, of loyalty, in the relations of ordinary life, as 
well as heroes of courage and patriotism in the counsels 
of peoples and at the head of armies. All these names, 
with their meaning well recognised, are in all languages, 
and constitute a certain and universal fact. We may 
explain this fact, but on one imperative condition, that in 
explaining we do not destroy it. Now, is the idea and 
the word disinterestedness explained to us by reducing 
disinterestedness to interest? This is what common sense 
invincibly repels. 

Poets have no system, — they address themselves to men 
as they really are, in order to produce in them certain 
effects. Is it skilful selfishness or disinterested virtue 
that poets celebrate ? Do they demand our applause for 
the successes of fortunate address, or for the voluntary 
sacrifices of virtue ? The poet knows that there is at the 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 251 

foundation of the human soul I know not what marvellous 
power of disinterestedness and devotedness. In addressing 
himself to this instinct of the heart, he is sure of awaken- 
ing a sublime echo, of opening every source of the pa- 
thetic. 

Consult the annals of the human race, and you will find 
in them man everywhere, and more and more, claiming 
his liberty. This word liberty is as old as man himself. 
What then ! Men wish to be free, and man himself should 
not be free ! The word nevertheless exists with the most 
determined signification. It signifies that man believes 
himself a free being, not only animated and sensible, but 
endowed with will, a will that belongs to him, that conse- 
quently cannot admit over itself the tyranny of another 
will which would make, in regard to him, the office of fata- 
lity, even were it that of the most beneficent fatality. Do 
you suppose that the word liberty could ever have been 
formed, if the thing itself did not exist ? None but a free 
being could possess the idea of liberty. Will it be said that 
the liberty of man is only an illusion ? The wishes of the 
human race are then the most inexplicable extravagance. 
In denying the essential distinction between liberty and 
fatality, we contradict all languages and all received no- 
tions ; we have, it is true, the advantage of absolving 
tyrants, but we degrade heroes. They have, then, fought 
and died for a chimera ! 

All languages contain the words esteem and contempt. 
To esteem, to despise, — these are universal expressions, 
certain phenomena, from which an impartial analysis can 
draw the highest notions. Can we despise a being who, 
in his acts, should not be free, a being who should not 
know the good, and should not feel himself obligated to 



-•)_ LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

fulfil it ? Suppose that the good is not essentially dif- 
ferent from the evil, suppose that there is in the world 
only interest more or less well understood, that there is 
no real dut} r , and that man is not essentially a free being, 
— it is impossible to explain rationally the word contempt. 
It is the same with the word esteem. 

Esteem is a fact which, faithfully expressed, contains 
a complete philosophy as solid as generous. Esteem has two 
certain characters : 1st, It is a disinterested sentiment in 
the soul of him who feels it ; 2nd, It is applied only to 
disinterested acts. We do not esteem at will, and because 
it is our interest to esteem. Neither do we esteem an 
action or a person because they have been successful. 
Success, fortunate calculation, may make us envied ; it 
does not bring esteem, which has another price. 

Esteem in a certain degree, and under certain circum- 
stances, is respect, — respect, a holy and sacred word which 
the most subtile or the loosest analysis will never degrade 
to expressing a sentiment that is related to ourselves, and 
is applied to actions crowned by fortune. 

Take again these two words, these two facts analogous 
to the first two, admiration and indignation. 'Esteem and 
contempt are rather judgments ; indignation and admira- 
tion are sentiments, but sentiments that pertain to intel- 
ligence and envelop a judgment. 1 

Admiration is an essentially disinterested sentiment. 
See whether there is any interest in the world that has 
the power to give you admiration for anything or any 
person. If you were interested, you might feign admira- 
tion, but you would not feel it. A tyrant with death in 
his hand, may constrain you to appear to admire, but not 

1 See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., lecture 5. 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 253 

to admire in reality. Even affection does not determine 
admiration ; whilst a heroic trait, even in an enemy, com- 
pels you to admire. 

The phenomenon opposed to admiration is indignation. 
Indignation is no more anger than admiration is desire. 
Anger is wholly personal. Indignation is never directly 
related to us ; it may have birth in the midst of circum- 
stances wherein we are engaged, but the foundation and 
the dominant character of the phenomenon in itself is to 
be disinterested. Indignation is in its nature generous. 
If I am a victim of an injustice, I may feel at once anger 
and indignation, anger against him that injures me, indig- 
nation towards him who is unjust to one of his fellow-men. 
We may be indignant towards ourselves ; we are indignant 
towards every thing that wounds the sentiment of justice. 
Indignation covers a judgment, the judgment that he who 
commits such or such an action, whether against us, or 
even for us, does an action unworthy, contrary to our 
dignity, to his own dignity, to human dignity. The injury 
sustained is not the measure of indignation, as the advan- 
tage received is not that of admiration. We felicitate 
ourselves on possessing or having acquired a useful thing ; 
but we never admire, on that account, either ourselves or 
the thing that we have just acquired. So we repel the 
stone that wounds us, we do not feel indignant towards it. 

Admiration elevates and ennobles the soul. The gene- 
rous parts of human nature are disengaged and exalted in 
presence of, and as it were in contact with, the image of 
the good. This is the reason why admiration is already 
by itself so beneficent, even should it be deceived in its 
object. Indignation is the result of these same generous 
parts of the soul, which, wounded by injustice, are highly 



254 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

roused and protest in the name of offended human 
dignity. 

Look at men in action, and you will see them imposing 
upon themselves great sacrifices in order to conquer the 
suffrages of their fellows. The empire of opinion is 
immense, — vanity alone does not explain it; it doubtless 
also pertains to vanity, but it has deeper and better roots. 
We judge that other men are, like us, sensible to good 
and evil, that they distinguish between virtue and vice, 
that they are capable of being indignant and admiring, 
of esteeming and respecting, as well as despising. This 
power is in us, we have consciousness of it, we know that 
other men possess it as well as we, and it is this power 
that frightens us. Opinion is our own consciousness 
transferred to the public, and there disengaged from all 
complaisance and armed with an inflexible severity. To 
the remorse in our own hearts, responds the shame in that 
second soul which we have made ourselves, and is called 
public opinion. We must not be astonished at the sweets 
of popularity. We are more sure of having done well, 
when to the testimony of our consciousness we are able to 
join that of the consciousness of our fellow-men. There 
is only one thing that can sustain us against opinion, and 
even place us above it : it is the firm and sure testimony 
of our consciousness, because, in fine, the public and the 
whole human race are compelled to judge us according to 
appearance, whilst we judge ourselves infallibly and by 
the most certain of all knowledge. 

Iiidicule is the fear of opinion in small things. The 
force of ridicule is wholly in the supposition that there 
is a common taste, a common type of what is proper, 
that directs men in their judgments, and even in their 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 2dd 

pleasantries, which in their way are also judgments. 
Without this supposition, ridicule falls of itself, and 
pleasantry loses its sting. But it is immortal, as well as 
the distinction between good and evil, between the 
beautiful and the ugly, between what is proper and what 
is improper. 

When we have not succeeded in any measure under- 
taken for our interest and prosperity, we experience a 
sentiment of pain that is called regret. But we do not 
confound regret with that other sentiment that rises in 
the soul when we are conscious of having done something 
morally bad. This sentiment is also a pain, but of quite 
a different nature, — it is remorse, repentance. That we 
have lost in play, for example, is disagreeable to us ; but 
if, in gaining, we have the consciousness of having deceived 
our adversary, we experience a very different sentiment. 

We might prolong and vary these examples. We have 
said enough to be entitled to conclude that human language 
and the sentiments that it expresses are inexplicable, if 
we do not admit the essential distinction between good 
and evil, between virtue and crime, crime founded on 
interest, virtue founded on disinterestedness. 

Disturb this distinction, and you disturb human life and 
entire society. Permit me to take an extreme, tragic, 
and terrible example. Here is a man that has just been 
judged. He has been condemned to death, and is about 
to be executed — to be deprived of life. And why ? Place 
yourself in the system that does not admit the essential 
distinction between good and evil, and ponder on what is 
stupidly atrocious in this act of human justice. What has 
the condemned done? Evidently a thing indifferent in 
itself. For if there is no other outward distinction than 



"256 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

that of pleasure and pain, I defy any one to qualify any 
human action, whatever it may be, as criminal, without 
the most absurd inconsequence. But this thing, indifferent 
in itself, a certain number of men, called legislators, have 
declared to be a crime. This purely arbitrary declaration 
has found no echo in the heart of this man. He has not 
been able to feel the justice of it, since there is nothing 
in itself just. He has therefore done, without remorse, 
what this declaration arbitrarily interdicted. The court 
proceeds to prove to him that he has not succeeded, but 
not that he has done contrary to justice, for there is no 
justice. I maintain that every condemnation, be it to death, 
or to any punishment whatever, imperatively supposes, 
in order to be anything else than a repression of violence 
by violence, the four following points : — 1st, That there is 
an essential distinction between good and evil, justice and 
injustice, and that to this distinction is attached, for every 
intelligent and free being, the obligation of conforming to 
good and justice ; 2nd, That man is an intelligent and free 
being, capable of comprehending this distinction, and the 
obligation that accompanies it, and of adhering to it 
naturally, independently of all convention, and every 
positive law ; capable also of resisting the temptations 
that bear him towards evil and injustice, and of fulfilling 
the sacred law of natural justice ; 3rd, That every act 
contrary to justice deserves to be repressed by force, and 
even punished in reparation of the fault committed, and 
independently too of all law and all convention; 4th, 
That man naturally recognises the distinction between the 
merit and demerit of actions, as he recognises the distinc- 
tion between the just and the unjust, and knows that every 
penalty applied to an unjust act is itself most strictly just. 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 257 

Such are the foundations of that power of judging and 
punishing which is entire society. Society has not made 
those principles for its own use ; they are much anterior 
to it, they are contemporaneous with thought and the soul, 
and upon these rests society, with its laws and its institu- 
tions. Laws are legitimate by their relation to these 
eternal laws. The surest power of institutions resides in 
the respect that these principles bear with them and 
extend to every thing that participates in them. Edu- 
cation develops them, it does not create them. They 
direct the legislator who makes the law, and the judge 
who applies it. They are present to the accused brought 
before the tribunal, they inspire every just sentence, they 
give it authority in the soul of the condemned, and in 
that of the spectator, and they consecrate the employment 
of force necessary for his execution. Take away a single 
one of these principles, and all human justice is overthrown, 
no longer is there anything but a mass of arbitrary con- 
ventions which no one in conscience is bound to respect, 
which may be violated without remorse, which are sustained 
only by the display of extreme punishments. The decisions 
of such a justice are not true judgments, but acts of force, 
and civil society is only an arena where men contend with 
each other without duties and rights, without any other 
object than that of procuring for themselves the greatest 
possible amount of enjoyment, of procuring it by conquest 
and preserving it by force or cunning, save throwing over 
all that the cloak of hypocritical laws. 

It is true, such is the aspect under which scepticism 
makes us consider society and human justice, driving us 
through despair to revolt and disorder, and bringing us back 
through despair again to quite another yoke than that of 



258 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

reason and virtue, to that regulated disorder which is called 
despotism. The spectacle of human things, viewed coolly, 
and without the spirit of system, is, thank God, less som- 
bre. Without doubt, society and human justice have still 
many imperfections which time discovers and corrects ; 
but it may be said, that in general thej rest on truth and 
natural equity. The proof of it is, that society every- 
where subsists, and is even developed. Moreover, facts, 
were they such as the melancholy pen of a Pascal or a 
Rousseau represent them to be, facts are not all, — before 
facts is right; and this idea of right alone, if it is real, 
suffices to overturn an abasing system, and save human 
dignity. Now, is the idea of right a chimera? I again 
appeal to languages, to individual consciousness, to the 
human race, — is it not true that fact is everywhere dis- 
tinguished from right, fact which too often, perhaps, but 
not always, as it is said, is opposed to right ; and right 
that subdues and rules fact, or protests against it? What 
word is it that restrains most in human societies? Is it 
not that of right? Look for a language that does not 
contain it. On all sides, society is bristling with rights. 
There is even a distinction made between natural right 
and positive right, between what is legal and what is 
equitable. It is proclaimed that force should be in the 
service of right, and not right at the mercy of force. The 
triumphs of force, wherever we perceive them, either under 
our eyes, or by the aid of history in bygone centuries, or 
by favour of universal publicity beyond the ocean, and in 
foreign continents, rouse indignation in the disinterested 
spectator or reader. On the contrary, he who inscribes 
on his banner the name of right, by that alone interests 
us ; the cause of right, or what we suppose to be the 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 259 

cause of right, is for us the cause of humanity. It is also a 
fact, and an incontestable fact, that in the eyes of man fact 
is not every thing, and that the idea of right is a univer- 
sal idea, graven in shining and ineffaceable characters, 
if not in the visible world, at least in that of thought and 
the soul; concerning that is the question; it is also that 
which in the long run reforms and governs the other. 

Individual consciousness, conceived and transferred to 
the entire species, is called common sense. It is common 
sense that has made, that sustains, that develops lan- 
guages, natural and permanent beliefs, society and its 
fundamental institutions. Grammarians have not in- 
vented languages, nor legislators societies, nor philo- 
sophers general beliefs. All these things have not been 
personally done, but by the whole world, — by the genius 
of humanity. 

Common sense is deposited in its works. All languages, 
and all human institutions contain the ideas and the sen- 
timents that we have just called to mind and described, 
and especially the distinction between good and evil, 
between justice and injustice, between free will and desire, 
between duty and interest, between virtue and happiness, 
with the profoundly rooted belief that happiness is a re- 
compense due to virtue, and that crime in itself deserves 
to be punished, and calls for the reparation of a just 
suffering. 

These things are attested by the words and actions of 
men. Such are the sincere and impartial, but somewhat 
confused, somewhat gross notions of common sense. 

Here begins the part of philosophy. It has before it 
two different routes; it can do one of two things: either 
accept the notions of common sense, elucidate them, 



260 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

thereby develop and increase them, and, by faithfully ex- 
pressing them, fortify the natural beliefs of humanity; or, 
pre-occupied with such or such a principle, impose it upon 
the natural data of common sense, admit those that agree 
with this principle, artificially bend the others to these, 
or openly deny them; this is what is called making a 
system. 

Philosophic systems are not philosophy; they try to 
realise the idea of it, as civil institutions try to realise 
that of justice, as the arts express in their way infinite 
beauty, as the sciences pursue universal science. Philo- 
sophic systems are necessarily very imperfect, otherwise 
there never would have been two systems in the world. 
Fortunate are those that go on doing good, that expand 
in the minds and souls of men, with some innocent errors, 
the sacred love of the true, the beautiful, and the good ! 
But philosophic systems follow their times much more 
than they direct them ; they receive their spirit from the 
hands of their age. Transferred to France towards the 
close of the regency and under the reign of Louis XV., 
the philosophy of Locke gave birth there to a celebrated 
school, which for a long time governed and still subsists 
among us, protected by ancient habits, but in radical 
opposition to our new institutions and our new wants. 
Sprung from the bosom of tempests, nourished in the 
cradle of a revolution, brought up under the bad discip- 
line of the genius of war, the nineteenth century cannot 
recognise its image and find its instincts in a philosophy 
born under the influence of the voluptuous refinements of 
Versailles, admirably fitted for the decrepitude of an arbi- 
trary monarchy, but not for the laborious life of a young 
liberty surrounded with perils. As for us, after having 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 261 

combat ted the philosophy of sensation in the metaphysics 
which it substituted for Cartesianism, and in the deplor- 
able aesthetics, now too accredited, under which succumbed 
our great national art of the seventeenth century, we do 
not hesitate to combat it again in the ethics that were its 
necessary product, the ethics of interest. 

The exposition and refutation of these pretended ethics 
will be the subject of the next lecture. 



262 



LECTURE XII. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 1 



Exposition of the doctrine of interest. — What there is of truth in this doc- 
trine. — Its defects. 1st, It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby 
abolishes liberty. 2nd, It cannot explain the fundamental distinction 
between good and evil. 3rd, It cannot explain obligation and duty. 
4th, "Nor right. 5th, Nor the principle of merit and demerit. — Conse- 
quences of the ethics of interest: that they cannot admit a providence, 
and lead to despotism. 



The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single 
fact, agreeable or painful sensation, necessarily arrives 
in ethics at a single principle, — interest. The whole of 
the system may be explained as follows: — 

Man is sensible to pleasure and pain : he shuns the one 
and seeks the other. That is his first instinct, and this 
instinct will never abandon him. Pleasure may change 
so far as its object is concerned, and be diversified in a 
thousand ways; but whatever form it takes, — physical 
pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral pleasure, — it is 
always pleasure that man pursues. 

The agreeable generalized is the useful; and the 
greatest possible sum of pleasure, whatever it may be, no 
longer concentrated within such or such an instant, but 

1 On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of 
vol. iii. of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St. Lambert. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 263 

distributed over a certain extent of duration, is happi- 
ness. 1 

Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experi- 
ences it; it is essentially personal. Ourselves, and our- 
selves alone we love, in loving pleasure and happiness. 

Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every 
thing our pleasure and our happiness. 

If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole 
motive of all our actions. 

Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands 
it well or ill. Much art is necessary in order to be happy. 
We are not ready to give ourselves up to all the pleasures 
that are offered on the high-way of life, without examin- 
ing whether these pleasures do not conceal many a pain. 
Present pleasure is not every thing, — it is necessary to 
take thought for the future ; it is necessary to know how to 
renounce joys that may bring regret, and sacrifice pleasure 
to happiness, that is to say, to pleasure still, but pleasure 
more enduring and Jess intoxicating. The pleasures of 
the body are not the only ones, — there are other plea- 
sures, those of mind, even those of opinion : the sage tem- 
pers them by each other. 

The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics 
of perfected pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, 
the useful for the agreeable, prudence for passion. It 

1 The word loaheur, which has no exact English equivalent, which M. 
Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the definition 
given above, we have sometimes translated happiness, sometimes good 
fortune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When one has in mind 
the thing, he will not be troubled by the more or less exact word that 
indicates it : — all language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same 
relation to thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and 
govern them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing 
symbolized, the shadow for the reality. 



264 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

admits, like the human race, the words good and evil, 
virtue and vice, merit and demerit, punishment and re- 
ward, but it explains them in its own way. The good is 
that which in the eyes of reason is conformed to our true 
interest; evil is that which is contrary to our true inte- 
rest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how to resist 
the enticement of passions, decerns what is truly useful, 
and surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberra- 
tion of mind and character that sacrifices happiness to 
pleasures without duration or full of dangers. Merit and 
demerit, punishment and reward, are the consequences of 
virtue and vice : — for not knowing how to seek happiness by 
the road of wisdom, we are punished by not attaining it. 
The ethics of interest do not pretend to destroy any of 
the duties consecrated by public opinion; it establishes 
that all are conformed to our personal interest, and it is 
thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is the 
surest means of making them do good to us; and it is 
also the means of acquiring their esteem, their good will, 
and their sympathy, — always agreeable, and often useful. 
Disinterestedness itself has its explanation. Doubtless 
there is no disinterestedness in the vulgar sense of the word, 
that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, which is absurd, but 
there is the sacrifice of present interest to future interest, 
of gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more delicate 
pleasure. Sometimes one renders to himself a bad account 
of the pleasure that he pursues, and in fault of seeing 
clearly into his own heart, invents that chimera of dis- 
interestedness of which human nature is incapable, which 
it cannot even comprehend. 

It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics 
of interest is not overcharged, that it is^faithful. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 265 

We go further, — we acknowledge that these ethics are 
an extreme, but, up to a certain point, a legitimate reaction 
against the excessive rigour of stoical ethics, especially 
ascetic ethics that smother sensibility instead of regula- 
ting it, and, in order to save the soul from passions, de- 
mands of it a sacrifice of all the passions of nature that 
resembles a suicide. 

Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, 
employed in supporting bad fortune well without trying 
to surmount it, nor, like the author of the Imitation, the 
angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling for death as a for- 
tunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in him 
lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The 
love of pleasure, even the passions, have a place among 
the needs of humanity. Suppress the passions, and it is 
true, there is no more excess ; neither is there any main- 
spring of action, — without winds the vessel no longer pro- 
ceeds, and soon sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that 
lacks love of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror 
of suffering, especially the horror of death, who has 
neither the love of pleasure nor the love of happiness, in 
a word, destitute of all personal interest, — such a being 
will not long resist the innumerable causes of destruc- 
tion that surround and besiege him ; he will not remain a 
day. Never can a single family, nor the least society be 
formed or maintained. He who has made man has not 
confided the care of his work to virtue alone, to devoted- 
ness and sublime charity, — he has willed that the dura- 
tion and development of the race and human society 
should be placed upon simpler and surer foundations; 
and this is the reason why he has given to man the love 
of self, the instinct of preservation, the taste of pleasure 



266 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope and 
fear, love, ambition, personal interest in fine, a powerful, 
permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continu- 
ally ameliorate our condition upon the earth. 

So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the 
reality of their principle, — we are convinced that this 
principle exists, that it has a right to be. The only ques- 
tion that we raise is the following : — The principle of in- 
terest is true in itself, but are there not other principles 
quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and 
happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other 
sentiments, as powerful, as vital? The first and univer- 
sal principle of human life is the need of the individual to 
preserve himself; but would this principle suffice to support 
human life and society entire and as we behold it? 

Just as the existence of the body does not hinder 
that of the soul, and reciprocally, so in the ample bosom 
of humanity and the profound designs of divine Provi- 
dence, the principles that differ most do not exclude each 
other. 

The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to ex- 
perience. We also invoke experience; and it is experi- 
ence that has given us certain facts mentioned in the pre- 
ceding lecture, which constitute the primary notions of 
common sense. We admit the facts that serve as a foun- 
dation for the system of interest, and reject the system. 
The facts are true in their proper bearing, — the system is 
false in attributing to them an excessive, limitless bear- 
ing; and it is false again in denying other facts quite as 
incontestable. A sound philosophy holds for its primary 
law to collect all real facts and respect the real differences 
tli at also distinguish them. What it pursues before all, is 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 267 

not unity, but truth. 1 Now the ethics of interest muti- 
late truth, — they choose among facts those that agree 
with them, and reject all the others, which are precisely 
the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they 
deny what they do not explain, — they form a whole well 
united, which, as an artificial work, may have its merit, 
but is broken to pieces as soon as it comes to encounter 
human nature with its grand parts. 

We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an off- 
spring of the philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction 
with a certain number of phenomena, which human na- 
ture presents to whomsoever interrogates it without the 
spirit of system. 

1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, 
but in the name of the most common experience, that 
entire humanity believes in the existence, in each of its 
members, of a certain force, a certain power that is called 
liberty. Because it believes in liberty in the individual, 
it desires that this liberty should be respected and pro- 
tected in society. Liberty is a fact that the consciousness 
of each of us attests to him, which, moreover, is enveloped 
in all the moral phenomena that we have signalized, in 
moral approbation and disapprobation, in esteem and 
contempt, in admiration and indignation, in merit and 
demerit, in punishment and reward. We ask the philo- 
sophy of sensation and the ethics of interest what they 
do with this universal phenomena which all the beliefs of 
humanity suppose, on which entire life, private and pub- 
lic, turns. 

1 On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3rd Series, Fray- 
ments PhSasopkiqueSf vol. iv., our Examination of the Lectures of M. La- 
romeguiere. 



268 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which con- 
tains, I do not say a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly 
admits liberty. When the ethics of interest advise a man 
to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, it apparently ad- 
mits that man is free to follow or not to follow this advice. 
But in philosophy it does not suffice to admit a fact, there 
must be the right to admit it. Now, most moralists of 
interest deny the liberty of man, and no one has the right 
to admit it in a system that derives the entire human soul, 
all its faculties as well as all its ideas, from sensation 
alone and its developments. 

When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our 
soul, quits it and vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of 
suffering, a want, a need, — it is agitated, disquieted. 
This disquietude, at first vague and indecisive, is soon 
determined; it is borne towards the object that has pleased 
us, whose absence makes us suffer. This movement of the 
soul, more or less vivid, is desire. 

Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty ? 
What is it called to be free ? Each one knows that he is 
free, when he knows that he is master of his action, that 
he can begin it, arrest it, or continue it as he pleases. We 
are free, when before acting we have taken the resolution 
to act, knowing well that we are able to take the opposite 
resolution. A free act is that of which, by the infallible 
testimony of my consciousness, I know that I am the 
cause, for which, therefore, I regard myself as responsible. 
God, the world, the body, can produce in me a thousand 
movements ; these movements may seem to the eyes of an 
external observer to be voluntary acts ; but any error is im- 
possible to consciousness, — it distinguishes every movement 
not voluntary, whatever it may be, from a voluntary act. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 269 

True activity is voluntary and free "activity. Desire is 
just the opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is 
passion ; but language, as well as consciousness, says that 
man is passive in passion; and the more vivid passion is, 
the more imperative are its movements, the farther is it 
from the type of true activity in which the soul possesses 
and governs itself. 

I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that 
precedes and determines it. If an agreeable object is 
presented to me, am I able not to be agreeably moved? If 
it is a painful object, am I able not to be painfully moved? 
And so, when this agreeable sensation has disappeared, if 
memory and imagination remind me of it, is it in my 
power not to suffer from no longer experiencing it, is it in 
my power not to feel the need of experiencing it again, 
and to desire more or less ardently the object that alone 
can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul ? 

Observe well what takes place within you in desire; 
you recognise in it a blind emotion, that, without any 
deliberation on your part, and without the intervention of 
your will, rises or falls, increases or diminishes. One does 
not desire, and cease to desire, according to his will. 

Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it ; 
it is not, therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sen- 
sations that objects produce, nor even the desires that 
these sensations engender; we do reproach ourselves for 
the consent of the will to these desires, and the acts that 
follow, for these acts are in our power. 

Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and 
leads man into acts that he does not impute to himself, 
for they are not voluntary. It is even the refuge of many 
of the accused; they lay their faults to the violence of 



270 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

desire and passion, which have not left them masters of 
themselves. 

If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire 
the freer we should be. Evidently the contrary is true. 
As the violence of desire increases, the dominion of man 
over himself decreases; and as desire is weakened and 
passion extinguished, man repossesses himself. 

I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. 
That two facts differ, it does not follow that they must be 
without relation to each other. By removing certain ob- 
jects, or even by merely diverting our thoughts away from 
the pleasure that they can give us, we are able, to a cer- 
tain extent, to turn aside and elude the sensible effects of 
these objects, and escape the desire which they might 
excite in us. One may also, by surrounding himself with 
certain objects, in some sort manage himself, and produce 
in himself sensations and desires which for that are not 
more voluntary than would be the impression made upon 
us by a stone with which we should strike ourselves. By 
yielding to these desires, we lend them a new force, and 
we moderate them by a skilful resistance. One even has 
some power over the organs of the body, and, by applying 
to them an appropriate regimen, he goes so far as to 
modify their functions. All this proves that there is in 
us a power different from the senses and desire, which, 
without disposing of them, sometimes exercises over them 
an indirect authority. 

"Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelli- 
gence. To will and to know are two things essentially 
different. We do not judge as we will, but according to 
the necessary laws of the judgment and the understand- 
ing. The knowledge of truth is not a resolution of the 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 271 

will. It is not the will that declares, for example, that 
body is extended, that it is in space, that every pheno- 
menon has a cause, etc. Yet the will has much power 
over intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that we 
work, that we give attention, for a longer or a shorter 
time, more or less intense, to certain things; consequently, 
it is the will that develops and increases intelligence, as 
it might let it languish and become extinguished. It 
must, then, be avowed that there is in us a supreme power 
that presides over all our faculties, over intelligence as 
well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, and 
is mingled with them, governs them, or leaves them to 
their natural development, making appear, even in its 
absence, the character that belongs to it, since the man 
that is deprived of it avows that he is no longer master of 
himself, that he is not himself, so true is it that human 
personality resides particularly in that prominent power 
that is called the will. 1 

Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, 
and yet so manifest! Strange confounding of will and 
desire, wherein the most opposite schools meet each other, 
Spinosa, Malebranche, and Condillac, the philosophy of 
the seventeenth century, and that of the eighteenth ! 
One, a despiser of humanity, by an extreme and ill-under- 
stood piety, strips man of his own activity, in order to 
concentrate it in God; the other transfers it to nature. 
In both man is a mere instrument, nothing else than a 
mode of Grod or a product of nature. When desire is 
once taken as the type of human activity, there is an end 
of all liberty and personality. A philosophy, less syste- 

1 On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the 
Examination, already cited, of the Lectures of M. Laromeguiere. 



272 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

matic, by conforming itself to facts, carries through com- 
mon sense to better results. By distinguishing between 
the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely 
determining self, it restores the true activity that charac- 
terizes human personality. The will is the infallible sign 
and the peculiar power of a real and effective being; for 
how could he who should be only a mode of another being 
find in his own borrowed being a power capable of willing 
and producing acts of which he should feel himself the 
cause, and the responsible cause ? 

If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from 
passive phenomena, cannot explain true activity, volun- 
tary and free activity, we might regard it as demonstrated 
that this same philosophy cannot give a true doctrine of 
morality, for all ethics suppose liberty. In order to im- 
pose rules of action on a being, it is necessary that this 
being should be capable of fulfilling or violating them. 
What makes the good and evil of an action is not the 
action itself, but the intention that has determined it. 
Before every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the inten- 
tion, and to the intention the punishment is attached. 
Where, then, liberty is wanting, where there is nothing but 
desire and passion, not even a shade of morality subsists. 
But we do not wish to reject, by the previous question, 
the ethics of sensation. We proceed to examine in itself 
the principle that they lay down, and to show that from 
this principle can be deduced neither the idea of good and 
evil, nor any of the moral ideas that are attached to it. 

2nd. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good 
is nothing else than the useful. By substituting the use- 
ful for the agreeable, without changing the principle, there 
has been contrived a convenient refuge against many diffi- 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 273 

culties; for it will always be possible to distinguish inte- 
rest well understood from apparent and vulgar interest. 
But even under this somewhat refined form, the doctrine 
that we are examining none the less destroys the distinc- 
tion between good and evil. 

If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, 
I must consider only one thing when an action is pro- 
posed to me to do, — what advantages can result from it 
to me? 

So I make the supposition that a friend, whose inno- 
cence is known to me, falls into disfavour with a king, or 
opinion— a mistress more jealous and imperious than all 
kings, — and that there is danger in remaining faithful to 
him and advantage in separating myself from him ; if, on 
one side, the danger is certain, and on the other the 
advantage is infallible, it is clear that I must either aban- 
don my unfortunate friend, or renounce the principle of 
interest — of interest well understood. 

But it will be said to me: — think on the uncertainty of 
human things ; remember that misfortune may also over- 
take you, and do not abandon your friend, through fear 
that you may one day be abandoned. 

I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, 
but the present is certain; if I can reap great and un- 
mistakeable advantages from an action, it would be ab- 
surd to sacrifice them to the chance of a possible misfor- 
tune. Besides, according to my supposition, all the 
chances of the future are in my favour, — this is the 
hypothesis that we have made. 

Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal in- 
terest is the only rational principle, the public reason 
must be with me. If it were against me, it would be an 



274 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

objection ag&itist the truth of the principle. For how 
could a true principle, rationally applied, be revolting 
to the public conscience? 

Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I 
feel for having followed the truth, if the principle of inte- 
rest is in fact moral truth? On the contrary, I should 
feel satisfaction on account of it. 

The rewards and punishments of another life remain. 
But how are we to believe in another life, in a system 
that confines human consciousness within the limits of 
transformed sensation? 

I have, then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. 
And mankind nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity ; 
and, if I am wanting in it, I am dishonoured. 

If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil are not 
in the act itself, but in its happy or unhappy results. 

Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There 
is a man who has calculated badly." Whence it follows 
that, if this man, in doing what he did, could have escaped 
punishment, he would have calculated well, and his con- 
duct would have been laudable. The action then be- 
comes good or ill according to the issue. Every act is 
of itself indifferent, and it is lot that qualifies it. 

If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calcula- 
tion is the highest wisdom ; it is even virtue ! 

But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. 
It supposes, with long experience of life, a sure insight, 
capable of discerning all the consequences of actions, a 
head strong and large enough to embrace and weigh their 
different chances. The young man, the ignorant, the 
poor in mind, are not able to distinguish between the 
good and the evil, the honest and the dishonest. And 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 275 

even in supposing the most consummate prudence, what 
place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things, 
for chance and the unforeseen ! In truth, in the system 
of interest well understood, there must be great know- 
ledge in order to be an honest man. Much less is requi- 
site for ordinary virtue, whose motto has always been: 
Do what you ought, let come what may. 1 But this prin- 
ciple is precisely the opposite of the principle of interest. 
It is necessary to choose between them. If interest is the 
only principle avowed by reason, disinterestedness is a lie 
and madness, and literally an incomprehensible monster 
in well-ordered human nature. 

Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and 
thereby it does not simply mean that wise selfishness that 
deprives itself of a pleasure for a surer, more delicate, or 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "In the doctrine of interest, every man 
seeks the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of 
prudence and profound combinations, increase in his favour the chances of 
success; it is impossible that there should not remain some chances against 
him; he never pursues, then, anything but a probable result. On the 
contrary, in the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of obtaining the last 
end that I propose to myself, moral good. I risk my life to save my 
fellow; if, through mischance, I miss this end, there is another which does 
not, which cannot, escape me, — I have aimed at the good, I have been 
successful. Moral good, being especially in the virtuous intention, is 
always in my power and within my reach; as to the material good that can 
result from the action itself, Providence alone disposes of it. Let us feli- 
citate ourselves that Providence has placed our moral destiny in our own 
hands, by making it depend upon the good and not upon the useful. The 
v ill, in order to act in the sad trials of life, has need of being sustained by 
certainty. Who would be disposed to give his blood for an uncertain end ? 
Success is a complicated problem, that, in order to be solved, exacts all the 
power of the calculus of probabilities. What labour and what uncertain- 
ties does such a calculus involve ! Doubt is a very sad preparation for 
action. But when one proposes before all to do his duty, he acts without 
any perplexity. Do what you ought, let come what may, is a motto that 
doe3 not deceive. With such an end, we are sure of never pursuing it in 
vain." 



276 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

more durable pleasure. No one has ever believed that it 
was the nature or the degree of the pleasure sought that 
constituted disinterestedness. This name is awarded only 
to the sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may be, to a 
motive free from all interest. And the human race, not 
only thus understands disinterestedness, but it believes 
that such a disinterestedness exists; it believes the human 
soul capable of it. It admires the devotedness of Regu- 
lus, because it does not see what interest could have im- 
pelled that great man to go far from his country to seek, 
among cruel enemies, a frightful death, when he might 
have lived tranquil and even honoured in the midst of his 
family and his fellow-citizens. 

But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired 
Regulus ; it is, then, interest still that explains the 
apparent heroism of the old Roman. Admit, then, that 
this manner of understanding his interest is even ridicu- 
lously absurd, and that heroes are very unskilful and 
inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting statues, with 
the deceived human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. 
Vincent de Paul, true philosophy must send them to the 
Petites-Maisons, that a good regime may cure them of 
generosity, charity, and greatness of soul, and restore 
them to the sane state, the normal state, the state in 
which man only thinks of himself, and knows no other law, 
no other principle of action than his interest. 

3rd. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinc- 
tion between good and evil, if there is only interest well 
or ill understood, there can be no obligation. 

It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a 
being capable of fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to 
a free being. Then the nature of obligation is such, that 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 277 

if we are delinquent in fulfilling it, we feel ourselves 
culpable, whilst if, instead of understanding our interest 
well, we have understood it ill, there follows only a single 
thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being culpable 
and being unfortunate the same thing ? These are two 
ideas radically different. You may advise me to under- 
stand my interest well, under penalty of falling into mis- 
fortune ; you cannot command me to see clearly in regard 
to my interest under penalty of crime. 

Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When 
it is morally accused, it is much less as being wrong than 
as attesting vices of the soul, lightness, presumption, 
feebleness. 

As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult 
of discernment. Obligation is always immediate and mani- 
fest. In vain passion and desire combat it; in vain the 
reasoning that passion trains for its attendance, like a 
docile slave, tries to smother it under a mass of sophisms: 
the instinct of conscience, a cry of the soul, an intuition 
of reason, different from reasoning, is sufficient to repel 
all sophisms, and make obligation appear. 

However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, 
we may always enter into contest and arrangement with 
it. There are a thousand ways of being happy. You 
assure me that, by conducting myself in such a manner, I 
shall arrive at fortune. Yes, but I love repose more than 
fortune, and with happiness alone in view, activity is not 
better than sloth. Nothing is more difficult than to advise 
any one in regard to his interest, nothing is easier than 
to advise him in regard to honour. 

After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the 
agreeable, that is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard 



278 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

to pleasure, every thing* depends on humour and tempera- 
ment. When there is neither good nor evil in itself, there 
are no pleasures more or less noble, more or less elevated ; 
there are only pleasures that are more or less agreeable 
to us. Every thing depends on the nature of each one. 
This is the reason why interest is so capricious. Each one 
understands it as it pleases him, because each one is the 
judge of what pleases him. One is more moved by 
pleasures of the senses, another by pleasures of mind and 
heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place 
of pleasures of the senses ; to the former, the pleasure of 
dominion appears much superior to that of glory. Each 
man has his own passions, each man, then, has his 
own way of understanding his interest ; and even my 
interest of to-day is not my interest of to-morrow. The 
revolutions of health, age, and events greatly modify our 
tastes, our humours. We are ourselves perpetually chang- 
ing, and with us change our desires and our interests. 

It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is 
absolute. The idea of obligation implies that of something 
inflexible. That alone is a duty from which one cannot 
be loosed under any pretext, and is, by the same title, a duty 
for all. There is one thing before which all the caprices of 
my mind, of my imagination, of my sensibility must disap- 
pear, — the idea of the good with the obligation which it 
involves. To this supreme command I can oppose neither 
my humour, nor circumstances, nor even difficulties. 
This law admits of no delay, no accommodation, no excuse. 
When it speaks, be it to you or me, in whatever place, 
under whatever circumstance, in whatever disposition we 
may be, it only remains for us to obey. We are able not 
to obey, for we are free ; but every disobedience to the law 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 279 

appears to ourselves a fault more or less grave, a bad use 
of our liberty. And the violated law has its immediate 
penal sanction in the remorse that it inflicts upon us. 

The only penalty that is brought upon us by the 
counsels of prudence, comprehended more or less well, 
followed more or less well, is, in the final account, more or 
less happiness or unhappiness. Now, I pray you, am I 
obligated to be happy ? Can obligation depend upon happi- 
ness, that is to say, on a thing that it is equally impossible 
for me to always seek and obtain at will ? If I am 
obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil the obligation 
imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my 
happiness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances 
independent of me, whilst it is all in all in regard to virtue, 
for virtue is only an employment of liberty. Moreover, 
happiness is in itself, morally, neither better nor worse 
than unhappiness. If I understand my interest badly, I 
am punished for it by regret, not by remorse. Unhappi- 
ness can_ overwhelm me ; it does not disgrace me, if it is 
not the consequence of some vice of the soul. 

Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, 
Thou art no evil. No, I earnestly advise man to escape 
suffering as much as he can, to understand well his inte- 
rest, to shun unhappiness and seek happiness. I only wish 
to establish that happiness is one thing and virtue another, 
that man necessarily aspires after happiness, but that he 
is only obligated to virtue, and that consequently, by the 
side of and above interest well-understood is a moral law, 
that is to say, as consciousness attests and the whole 
human race avows, an imperative prescription of which 
one cannot voluntarily divest himself without crime and 
shame. 



280 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by 
a necessary consequence, it does not more account for that 
of right ; for duty and right reciprocally suppose each 
other. 

Might and right must not be confounded A being 
might have immense power, that of the whirlwind, of the 
thunder-bolt, that of one of the forces of nature ; if liberty 
is not joined to it, it is only a fearful and terrible thing, 
it is not a person, — it may inspire, in the highest degree, 
fear and hope, — it has no right to respect ; one has no 
duties towards it. 

Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother 
is liberty. They are born at the same time, are developed 
and perish together. It might even be said that duty and 
right make one, and are the same being, having a face on 
two different sides. What, in fact, is my right to your re- 
spect, except the duty you have to respect me, because I 
am a free being ? But you are yourself a free being, and 
the foundation of my right and your duty becomes for you 
the foundation of an equal right, and in me of an equal 
duty. 1 

I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and 
liberty alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse ; 
by all the rest men differ ; for resemblance implies differ- 
ence. As there are no two leaves that are the same, there 
are no two men absolutely the same in body, senses, mind, 
heart. But it is impossible to conceive of difference be- 
tween the free will of one man and the free will of an- 
other. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, I am 
free as much as you, and you are as much as I. There is 
not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much 

1 See the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 281 

as, and by the same title as another moral person. Voli- 
tion, which is the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. 
It may have in its service different instruments, powers 
different, and consequently unequal, whether material or 
spiritual. But the powers of which will disposes are not 
it, 1 for it does not dispose of them in an absolute manner. 
The only free power is that of will, but that is essentially 
so. If will recognises laws, these laws are not motives, 
springs that move it, — they are ideal laws, that of justice, 
for example ; will recognises this law, and at the same 
time it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or 
to break it, doing the one only with the consciousness of 
the ability to do the other, and reciprocally. Therein is 
the type of liberty, and at the same time of true equality; 
every thing else is false. It is not true that men have the 
right to be equally rich, beautiful, robust, to eirjoy 
equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate ; for they ori- 
ginally and necessarily differ in all those points of their 
nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good for- 
tune. God has made us with powers unequal in regard 
to all these things. Here equality is against nature and 
eternal order ; for diversity and difference, as well as har- 
mony, are the law of creation. To dream of such an 
equality is a strange mistake, a deplorable error. False 
equality is the idol of ill-formed minds and hearts, of dis- 
quiet and ambitious egoism. True equality accepts with- 
out shame all the exterior inequalities that God has made, 
and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, 
but even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle 
with the furies of pride and envy. As it does not aspire 
to domination, so, and by virtue of the same principle, it 

1 See lecture 14. Theory of liberty. 

N 



282 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

does not more aspire to a chimerical equality of mind, of 
beauty, of fortune, of enjoyments. Moreover, such an equal- 
ity, were it possible, would be of little value in its own eyes ; 
it asks something much greater than pleasure, fortune, 
rank, to wit, respect. Respect, an equal respect of the 
sacred right of being free in every thing that constitutes 
the person, that person which is truly man ; this is 
what liberty and with it true equality claim, or rather im- 
peratively demand. Respect must not be confounded 
with homage. I render homage to genius and beauty. 
I respect humanity alone, and, by that I mean all free 
natures, for every thing that is not free in man is foreign 
to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in 
every thing that makes him man, and the reign of true 
equality exacts on the part of all only the same respect 
for what each one possesses equally in himself, both young 
and old, both ugly and beautiful, both rich and poor, both 
the man of genius and the mediocre man, both woman 
and man, whatever has consciousness of being a person 
and not a thing. The equal respect of common liberty is 
the principle at once of duty and right; it is the virtue of 
each and the security of all; by an admirable agreement, 
it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on earth. 
Such is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, 
which has made the hearts of our fathers beat, and the 
hearts of all virtuous and enlightened men, of all true 
friends of humanity. Such is the ideal that true philosophy 
pursues across the ages, from the generous dreams of Plato 
to the solid conceptions of Montesquieu, from the first free 
legislation of the smallest city of Greece to our declaration 
of rights, and the immortal works of the constituent 
Assembly. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 28-1 

The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that 
condemns it to consequences as disastrous as those of the 
principle of liberty are beneficent. By confounding will 
with desire, it justifies passion, which is desire in all its 
force — passion, which is precisely the opposite of liberty. 
It accordingly unchains all the desires and all the passions, 
it gives full rein to imagination and the heart; it renders 
each man much less happy on account of what he posses- 
ses, than miserable on account of what he lacks ; it makes 
him regard his neighbours with an eye of envy and con- 
tempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or 
tyranny. Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead 
in the train of desire? My desire is certainly to be the 
most fortunate possible. My interest is to seek to be so 
by all means, whatever they may be, under the single re- 
serve that they be not contrary to their end. If I am born 
the first of men, the richest, the most beautiful, the most 
powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the ad- 
vantages I have received. If fate has given me birth in 
a rank little elevated, with a moderate fortune, limited 
talents, and immense desires — for it cannot too often be 
repeated, desire of every kind aspires after the infinite — 
I shall do every thing to rise above the crowd, in order to 
increase my power, my fortune, my joys. Unfortunate on 
account of my position in this world, in order to change 
it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true, without 
enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does 
not produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad 
of vanity and ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune 
and power; interest, then, claims security, as before it in- 
voked agitation. The need of security brings me back 
from anarchy to the need of order, provided order be to 



284 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

my profit ; and I become a tyrant, if I can, or the gilt 
servant of a tyrant. Against anarchy and tyranny, those 
two scourges of liberty, the only rampart is the universal 
sentiment of right, founded on the firm distinction be- 
tween good and evil, the just and the useful, the honest 
and the agreeable, virtue and interest, will and desire, 
sensation and conscience. 

5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary conse- 
quences of the doctrine of interest. 

A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, 
cannot violate it, knowing that he should and may follow 
it, without immediately recognising that he merits punish- 
ment. The idea of punishment is not an artificial idea, 
borrowed from the profound calculations of legislators; 
legislations rest upon the natural idea of punishment. This 
idea, corresponding to that of liberty and justice, is neces- 
sarily wanting where the former two do not exist. Does he 
who obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the attraction of 
pleasure and happiness, supposing that, without any other 
motive than that of interest, he does an act conformed, 
externally at least, to the rule of justice, merit anything 
by doing such an action ? Not the least in the world. 
Conscience attributes to him no merit, and no one owes 
him thanks or recompense, for he only thinks of himself. 
On the other hand, if he injures others in wishing to servo 
himself, he does not feel culpable, and no one can say to 
him that he has merited punishment. A free being who 
wills what he does, who has a law, and can conform to it, 
or break it, is alone responsible for his acts. But what 
responsibility can there be in the absence of liberty and a 
recognised and accepted rule of justice? The man of 
sensation and desire tends to his own good under the law 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 285 

of interest, as the stone is drawn towards the centre of the 
earth under the law of gravitation, as the needle points to 
the pole. Man may err in the pursuit of his interest. In 
this case, what is to be done ? As it seems, to put him 
again in the right way. Instead of that, he is punished. 
And for what, I pray you? For being deceived. But 
error merits advice, not punishment. Punishment has, 
in the system of interest, no more the sanction of moral 
sense than recompense. Punishment is only an act of 
personal defence on the part of society ; it is an example 
which it gives, in order to inspire a salutary terror. These 
motives are excellent, if it be added that this punishment 
is just in itself, that it is merited, and that it is legiti- 
mately applied to the action committed. Omit that, and 
the other motives lose their authority, and there remains 
only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then 
the culprit is not punished ; he is smitten, or even put to 
death, as the animal that injures instead of serving is put 
to death without scruple. The condemned does not bow 
his head to the wholesome reparation due to justice, but 
to the weight of irons or the stroke of the axe. The chas- 
tisement is not a legitimate satisfaction, an expiation 
which, comprehended by the culprit, reconciles him in his 
own eyes with the order that he has violated. It is a storm 
that he could not escape; it is the thunder-bolt that falls 
upon him ; it is a force more powerful than his own, which 
compasses and overthrows him. The appearance of public 
chastisements acts, without doubt, upon the imagination 
of peoples; but it does not enlighten their reason and 
speak to their conscience; it intimidates them, perhaps ; 
it does not soften them. So recompense is only an addi- 
tional attraction, added to all the others. As, properly 



286 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

speaking 1 , there is no merit, recompense is simply an ad- 
vantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained 
without attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded 
and effaced the great institution, natural and divine, of 
the recompense of virtue by happiness, and of reparation 
for a fault by proportionate suffering. 1 

We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its 
being contradicted either by analysis or dialectics, that the 
doctrine of interest is incompatible with the most certain 
facts, with the strongest convictions of humanity. Let 
us add, that this doctrine is not less incompatible with the 
hope of another world, where the principle of justice will 
be better realised than in this. 

I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics 
can arrive at an infinite being, author of the universe and 
man. I am well persuaded that it cannot. For every 
pooof of the existence of (rod supposes in the human 
mind principles of which sensation renders no account, — 
for example, the universal and necessary principle of 
causality, without which I should have no need of seek- 
ing, no power of finding the cause of whatever exists. 2 All 
that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of in- 
terest, man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has 
no right to put in God that of which he finds no trace 
either in the world or in himself. The God of the ethics 
of interest must be analogous to the man of these same 
ethics. How could they attribute to him the justice and 
the love — I mean disinterested love — of which they can- 
not have the least idea ? The God that they can admit 
loves himself, and loves only himself. And reciprocally, 

1 See the preceding lecture, and lectures 14 and 15. 
2 1st part, lecture 1. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 287 

not considering him as the supreme principle of charity 
and justice, we can neither love nor honour him, and the 
only worship that we can render him, is that of the fear 
with which his omnipotence inspires us. 

"What holy hope could we then found upon such a God? 
And we who have some time grovelled upon this earth, 
thinking only of ourselves, seeking only pleasure and a 
pitiable happiness, what sufferings nobly borne for justice, 
what generous efforts to maintain and develop the dignity 
of our soul, what virtuous affections for other souls, can 
we offer to the Father of humanity as titles to his merci- 
ful justice ? The principle that most persuades the human 
race of the immortality of the soul is still the necessary 
principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here be- 
low its exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of 
finding it, inspires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, 
who has not put in our hearts the law of justice to. violate 
it himself in regard to us. 1 Now, we have just seen that 
the ethics of interest destroy the principle of merit and 
demerit, both in this world, and above all, in the world to 
come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond this world, — 
no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and 
wholly good, against the sports of fortune and the imper- 
fections of human justice. Every thing is completed for 
man between birth and death, in spite of the instincts and 
presentiments of his heart, and even the principles of 
his reason. 

The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory 
of having freed humanity from the fears and hopes that 
turn it aside from its true interests. It is a service which 
mankind will appreciate. But since they confine our 

1 Stse lecture 16. 



*288 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

whole destiny to this world, let us demand of them what 
lot so worthy of envy they have in reserve for us here, 
what social order they charge with our good fortune, what 
politics, in fine, are derived from their ethics. 1 

You already know. We have demonstrated that the phi- 
losophy of sensation knows neither true liberty nor true 
right. What, in fact, is will for this philosophy? It is 
desire. What, then, is right? The power of satisfying 
desires. On this score, man is not free, and right is 
might. 

Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. 
Desire comes of need which man does not make, which he 
submits to. He submits in the same way to desire. To 
reduce will to desire is to annihilate liberty ; it is worse 
still, it is to put it where it is not ; it is to create a men- 
dacious liberty that becomes an instrument of crime and 
misery. To call man to such a liberty is to open his soul 
to infinite desires, which it is impossible for him to satisfy. 
Desire is in its nature without limits, and our power is 
very limited. If we were alone in this world, we should 
even then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But 
w T e press against each other with immense desires, and 
limited, diverse, and unequal powers. When right is the 
force that is in each of us, equality of rights is a chimera, — 
all rights are unequal, since all forces are unequal and 
can never cease to be so. It is, therefore, necessary to 
renounce equality as well as liberty; or if one invents a 
false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity 
in pursuit of a phantom. 

1 On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation, see 
the four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation of the 
doctrine of Hobbes, vol. hi. of the 1st Series. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 289 

Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest 
give to politics. From such elements I defy all the 
politics of the school of sensation and interest to produce 
a single day of liberty and happiness for the human race. 

When right is might, the natural state of men among 
themselves, is war. All desiring the same things, they 
are all necessarily enemies ; and in this war, woe to the 
feeble, to the feeble in body and the feeble in mind ! The 
stronger are the masters by perfect right. Since right is 
might, the feeble may complain of nature that has not 
made them strong, and not complain of the strong man 
who uses his right in oppressing theui. The feeble then 
call deception to their aid; and it is in this strife between 
cunning and force that humanity combats with itself. 

Yes. if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, 
with different forces pitted against each other, war, a 
war sometimes declared and bloody, sometimes silent and 
full of meannesses, is in the nature of things. No social 
art can change this nature, — it may be more or less 
covered ; it always reappears, overcomes and rends the 
veil with which a mendacious legislation envelops it. 
Dream, then, of liberty for beings that are not free, of 
equality between beings that are essentially different, of 
respect for rights where there is no right, and of the esta- 
blishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of in- 
imical passions ! From such a foundation can spring only 
endless troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils to- 
gether in a necessary circle. 

This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of prin- 
ciples which all the metamorphoses of sensation do not 
engender, and for which interest cannot account, which 
none the less subsist to the honour and for the safety of 



290 



LECTURE TWELFTH. 



humanity. These principles are those that time has little 
by little drawn from Christianty in order to give them 
for the guidance of modern societies. You will find them 
written in the glorious declaration of rights that for ever 
broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the con- 
stitutional monarchy. They are in the charter that go- 
verns us, in our laws, in our institutions, in our manners, 
in the air that we breathe. They serve at once as foun- 
dations for our society and the new philosophy necessary 
to a new order. 1 

Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, 
so many distinguished, so many honest souls could let 
themselves be seduced by a system that must have been 
revolting to all their sentiments. I w r ill answer by re- 
minding you that the eighteenth century was an immode- 
rate reaction against the faults into which had sadly 
fallen the old age of a great century and a great king, 
that is to say, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the 
persecution of all free and elevated philosophy, a narrow 
and suspicious devotion, and intolerance, with its usual 
companion, hypocrisy. These excesses must have pro- 
duced opposite excesses. Mme. de Maintenon opened the 
route to Mme. de Pompadour. After the mode of devo- 
*on comes that of licence ; it takes every thing by storm. 

1 These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we pro- 
nounce them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble 
youth, when M. de Chateaubriand covered the Restoration with his own 
glory, when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M. Pas- 
quier, M. Laine\ M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal Saint- 
Cyr over war, and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when the 
Duke de Broglie prepared the true legislation of the press, and M. De- 
cazes, the author of the wise and courageous ordinance of September 5, 
1816, was at the head of the councils of the crown; when, finally, Louis 
XVIII. separated himself, like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in 
order to be the king of the whole nation. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 291 

It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy 
even, and accordingly to the people. It carried away the 
best spirits, even genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy 
in the place of the national philosophy, culpable, persecu- 
ted as it had been, for not being irreconcilable with Chris- 
tianity. A disciple of Locke, whom Locke had discarded, 
Condillac, took the place of Descartes, as the author of 
Candide and la Pucette had taken the place of Corneille 
and Bosseut, as Boucher and Vanloo had taken the place of 
Lesueur and Poussin. The ethics of pleasure and interest 
were the necessary ethics of that epoch. It must not be 
supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says 
M. Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their 
principles. 1 No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no 
epicurean as enervated as epicureanism. Human weak- 
ness practically baffles virtuous theories ; in return, thank 
God, the instinct of the heart condemns to inconsistency 
the honest man who errs in bad theories. Accordingly, 
in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most 
disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign 
of the philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. 
But it is none the less true, that the philosophy of sensa- 
tion is false, and the ethics of interest destructive of all 
morality. 

I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture ; 
but it was necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of 
morality radically incompatible with that which I would 

1 (Euvres de Reid, vol. iv., p. 297: " Men are neither as good nor as bad 
as their principles ; and, as there is no sceptic in the street, so I am sure 
there is no disinterested spectator of human actions who is not compelled 
to discern them as just and unjust. Scepticism has no light that doesnot 
pale before the splendour of that vivid internal light that lightens the 
objects of moral perception, as the light of day lightens the objects of sen- 
sible perception." 



292 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

make penetrate your minds and your souls. It was espe- 
cially necessary for me to strip the ethics of interest 
of that false appearance of liberty which they usurp in 
vain. I maintain, on the contrary, that they are the 
ethics of slaves, and send them back to the time when 
they ruled. Now, the principle of interest being de- 
stroyed, I propose to examine other principles also, less 
false without doubt, but still defective, exclusive, and in- 
complete, upon which celebrated systems have pretended 
to found ethics. I will successively combat these prin- 
ciples taken in themselves, and will then bring them to- 
gether, reduced to their just value, in a theory large 
enough to contain all the true elements of morality, in 
order to express faithfully common sense and entire 
human consciousness. 



293 



LECTURE XIII. 

OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 

The ethics of sentiment. —The ethics founded on the principle of the 
interest of the greatest number.— The ethics founded on the will of 
God alone. — The ethics founded on the punishments and rewards of 
another life. 

Against the ethics of interest, all generous souls take 
refuge in the ethics of sentiment. The following are 
some of the facts on which these ethics are supported, 
and by which they seem to be authorized. 

When we have done a good action, is it not certain that 
we experience a pleasure of a certain nature, which is to 
us the reward of this action? This pleasure does not 
come from the senses — it has neither its principle nor its 
measure in an impression made upon our organs. Neither 
is it confounded with the joy of satisfied personal inte- 
rest, — we are not moved in the same manner, in thinking 
that we have succeeded, and in thinking that we have 
been honest. The pleasure attached to the testimony of 
a good conscience is pure ; other pleasures are much 
alloyed. It is durable, whilst the others quickly pass 
away. Finally, it is always within our reach. Even in 
the midst of misfortune, man bears in himself a per- 
manent source of exquisite joys, for he always has the 
power of doing right, whilst success, dependent upon a 



294 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

thousand circumstances of wliicli we are not the masters, 
can give only an occasional and precarious pleasure. 

As virtue has its joys, so crime has its pains. The suf- 
fering that follows a fault is the just recompense for the 
pleasure that we have found in it, and is often born with 
it. It poisons culpable joys and the successes that are 
not legitimate. It wounds, rends, bites, thus to speak, 
and thereby receives its name. 1 To be man, is sufficient 
to understand this suffering, — it is remorse. 

Here are other facts equally incontestable : — 

I perceive a man whose face bears the marks of dis- 
tress and misery. There is nothing in this that reaches 
and injures me ; nevertheless, without reflection or cal- 
culation, the sight alone of this suffering man makes me 
suffer. This sentiment is pity, compassion, whose general 
principle is sympathy. 

The sadness of one of my fellow-men inspires me with 
sadness, and a glad face disposes me to joy : 

Ut ridentibus arrident, ita fletitibua adflent 
Hurnani vultus. 

The joy of others has an echo in our souls, and their 
sufferings, even their physical sufferings, communicate 
themselves to us almost physically. Not as exaggerated 
as it has been supposed was that expression of Mme. de 
Sevigne to her sick daughter: I have a pain in your 
breast. 

Our soul feels the need of putting itself in unison, 
and, as it were, in equilibrium with that of others. Hence 
those electric movements, thus to speak, that run through 
large assemblies. One receives the counter-stroke of the 
sentiments of his neighbours, — admiration and enthusiasm 

1 Mordre — to bite, is the main root of remwds — remor.se. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 295 

are contagious, as well as pleasantly and ridicule. Hence 
again the sentiment with which the author of a virtuous 
action inspires us. We feel a pleasure analogous to that 
which he feels himself. But are we witnesses of a bad 
action? our souls refuse to participate in the sentiments 
that animate the culpable man, — they have for him a 
true aversion, what is called antipathy. 

We do not forget a third order of facts that pertain to 
the preceding, but differ from them. 

We not only sympathise with the author of a virtuous 
action, we wish him well, we voluntarily do good to him, 
in a certain degree we love him. This love goes as far as 
enthusiasm when it has for its object a sublime act and a 
hero. This is the principle of the homages, of the hon- 
ours that humanity renders to great men. And this 
sentiment does not pertain solely to others, — we apply it 
to ourselves by a sort of return that is not egoism. Yes, 
it may be said that we love ourselves when we have done 
well. The sentiment that others owe us, if they are just, 
we accord to ourselves, — that sentiment is benevolence. 

On the contrary, do we witness a bad action ? We 
experience for the author of this action antipathy; more- 
over we wish him evil, — we desire that he should suffer 
for the fault that he has committed, and in proportion to 
the gravity of the fault. For this reason great culprits 
are odious to us, if they do not compensate for their 
crimes by deep remorse, or by great virtues mingled 
with their crimes. This sentiment is not malevolence. 
Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment, which 
makes us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle 
to us. Hatred does not ask whether such a man is vir- 
tuous or vicious, but whether he obstructs us, surpasses 



296 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

us, or injures us. The sentiment of which we are speak- 
ing is a sort of hatred, but a generous hatred that neither 
springs from interest nor envy, but from a shocked con- 
science. It is turned against us when we do evil, as well 
as against others. 

Moral satisfaction is not sympathy, neither is sym- 
pathy, to speak rigorously, benevolence. But these three 
phenomena have the common character of all being senti- 
ments. They give birth to three different and analagous 
systems of ethics. 

According to certain philosophers, a good action is that 
which is followed by moral satisfaction, a bad action is 
that which is followed by remorse. The good or bad 
character of an action is at first attested to us by the 
sentiment that accompanies it. Then, this sentiment, 
with its moral signification, we attribute to other men ; 
for we judge that they do as we do, that in presence of 
the same actions they feel the same sentiments. 

Other philosophers have assigned the same part to 
sympathy or benevolence. 

For these the sign and measure of the good is in the 
sentiments of affection and benevolence which we feel for 
a moral agent. Does a man excite in us by such or such 
an action a more or less vivid disposition to wish him well, 
a desire to see and even make him happy ? we may say 
that this action is good. If, by a series of actions of the 
same kind, he makes this disposition and this desire per- 
manent in us, we judge that he is a virtuous man. Does 
he excite an opposite desire, an opposite disposition ? he 
appears to us a dishonest man. 

For the former, the good is that with which we natu- 
rally sympathise. Has a man devoted himself to death 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 297 

through love for his country ? this heroic action awakens 
in us, in a certain degree, the same sentiments that 
inspired him. Bad passions are not thus echoed in our 
hearts, unless they find us already very corrupt, and have 
interest for their accomplice ; but even then there is 
something in us that revolts against these passions, and in 
the most depraved soul subsists a concealed sentiment of 
sympathy for the good, and antipathy for the evil. 

These different sytems may be reduced to a single one, 
which is called the ethics of sentiment. 

It is not difficult to show the difference which separates 
these ethics from those of egoism. Egoism is the exclu- 
sive love of self, is the thoughtful and permanent search 
for our own pleasure and our own well-being. 

"What is there more opposed to interest than benevo- 
lence? In benevolence, far from wishing others well by 
reason of our interest, we will voluntarily risk something, 
we will make some sacrifice in order to serve an honest 
man who has gained our heart. If even in this sacrifice 
the soul feels a pleasure, this pleasure is only the involun- 
tary accompaniment of sentiment, it is not the end pro- 
posed, — we feel it without having sought it. It is, indeed, 
permitted the soul to taste this pleasure, for it is nature 
herself that attaches it to benevolence. 

Sympathy, like benevolence, is related to another than 
ourselves, — our interest is not its starting-point. The soul 
is so constituted that it is capable of suffering on account 
of the sufferings of an enemy. That a man does a noble 
action, although it opposes our interests, awakens in us a 
certain sympathy for that action and its author. 

The attempt has been made to explain the compassion 
with which the suffering of one of our fellow-men inspires us 



298 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

by the fear that we have of feeling it in our turn. But 
the unhappiness for which we feel compassion, is often 
so far from us and threatens us so little, that it would be 
absurd to fear it. Doubtless, that sympathy may have 
existence it is necessary to experience suffering, — non 
ignara mail. For how do you suppose that I can be sen- 
sible to evils of which I form to myself no idea? But 
that is only the condition of sympathy. It is not at all 
necessary to conclude that it is only a remembrance of 
our own ills or the. fear of ills to come. 

No recurrence to ourselves can account for sympathy. 
In the first place, it is involuntary like antipathy. Then 
it cannot be supposed that we sympathise with any one 
in order to win his benevolence; for he who is its object 
often knows not what we feel. What benevolence are 
we seeking, when we sympathise with men that we have 
never seen, that we never shall see, with men that are no 
more ? 

Egoism admits all pleasures ; it repels none ; it may, if 
it is enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, 
recommend, as more durable and less alloyed, the plea- 
sures of sentiment. The ethics of sentiment would then 
be confounded with those of egoism, if they should pre- 
scribe obedience to sentiment for the pleasure that we 
find in it. There would, then, be no disinterestedness in 
it, — the individual would be the centre and sole end of all 
his actions. But such is not the case. The charm of the 
pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that we 
are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. 
So if nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true 
enjoyment, it is on condition that these sentiments remain 
as they arc, pure and disinterested; you must only think 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. —99 

of the object of your sympathy and benevolence in order 
that benevolence and sympathy may receive their recom- 
pense in the pleasure which they give. Otherwise, this 
pleasure no longer has its reason for existence, and it is 
wanting as soon as it sought for itself. No metamorphose 
of interest can produce a pleasure attached to disinteres- 
tedness alone. 

The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood, — 
they preserve the names consecrated by ethics, but they 
abolish ethics themselves; they deceive humanity by 
speaking to humanity its own language, concealing under 
this borrowed' language a radical opposition to all the in- 
stincts, to all the ideas that form the treasure of mankind. 
On the contary, if sentiment is not the good itself, it is 
its faithful companion and useful auxiliary. It is as it 
were the sign of the presence of the good, and ren- 
ders the accomplishment of it more easy. We always 
have sophisms at our disposal, in order to persuade our- 
selves that our true interest is to satisfy present passion ; 
but sophism has less influence over the mind when the 
mind is in some sort defended by the heart. Nothing is, 
therefore, more salutary than to excite and preserve in 
the soul those noble sentiments that lift us above the 
slavery of personal interest. The habit of participating 
in the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us to act like 
them. To cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sym- 
pathy is to fertilize the source of charity and love, is to 
nourish and develop the germ of generosity and devotion. 

It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics 
of sentiment. These ethics are true, — only they arc not 
sufficient for themselves; they need a principle which 
authorizes them. 



300 LECTURE THIRTEENTH 

I act well, and I feel on account of it an internal satis- 
faction ; I do evil, and feel remorse on account of it. 
These two sentiments do not qualify the act that I have 
just done, since they follow it. Would it be possible for 
us to feel any internal satisfaction for having acted well 
if we did not judge that we had acted well? — any remorse 
for having done evil, if we did not judge that we had 
done evil ? At the same time that we do such or such an 
act, a natural and instinctive judgment characterizes it, 
and it is in consequence of this judgment that our sensi- 
bility is moved. Sentiment is not this primitive and im- 
mediate judgment ; far from forming the basis of the idea 
of the good, it supposes it. It is manifestly a vicious 
circle to derive the knowledge of the good from that 
which would not exist without this knowledge. 1 

So is it not because we find a good action that we sym- 
pathise with it? Is it not because the dispositions of 
a man appear to us conformed to the idea of justice, that 
we are inclined to participate in them with him? More- 
over, if sympathy were the true criterion of the good, 
every thing for which we feel sympathy w r ould be good. 
But sympathy is not only related to things in their nature 
moral, we also sympathise with the grief and the joy that 
have nothing to do with virtue and crime. We even sym- 
pathise with physical sufferings. Moral sympathy is only 
a case of general sympathy. It must even be acknow- 
ledged that sympathy is not always in accordance with 
right. We sometimes sympathise with certain sentiments 
that we condemn, because, without being in themselves 

1 See 1st part, lecture 5, On Mysticism, and 2nd part, lecture 6, On the 
S< ailment of the Beautiful. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv., detailed refuta- 
tion of the theories of Hutcheson and Smith. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 301 

bad — which would prevent all sympathy — they give an in- 
clination to the greatest faults ; for example, love, which 
comes so near to irregularity, and emulation that so 
quickly leads to ambition. 

Benevolence also is not always determined by the good 
alone. And, again, when it is applied to a virtuous 
man, it supposes a judgment by which we pronounce that 
this man is virtuous. It is not because we wish the author 
of an action well that we judge that this action is good ; 
it is because we judge that this action is good that we 
wish its author well. This is not all. In the sentiment 
of benevolence is enveloped a new judgment whieh is not 
in sympathy. This judgment is the following : the author 
of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a 
bad action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This 
is the reason why we desire happiness for the one and 
reparatory suffering for the other. Benevolence is little 
else than the sensible form of this judgment. 

All these sentiments, therefore, suppose an anterior and 
superior judgment. Everywhere and always the same 
vicious circle. From the fact that the sentiments which 
we have just described have a moral character, it is con- 
cluded that they constitute the idea of the good, whilst it 
is the idea of the good that communicates to them the 
character that we perceive in them. 

Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to 
sensibility, and borrow from it something of its relative 
and changing nature. It is, then, very necessary that all 
men should be made to enjoy with the same delicacy the 
pleasures of the heart. There are gross natures and na- 
tures refined. If your desires are impetuous and violent, 
will not the idea of the pleasures of virtue be in you much 



o02 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

more easily overcome by the force of passion than if nature 
had given you a tranquil temperament? The state of the 
atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral 
sensibility. Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, 
leaves to remorse all its energy, the presence of death re- 
doubles it; but the world, noise, force of example, habit, 
without power to smother it, in some sort stun it. The 
spirit has a little season of rest. "We are not always in 
the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its intermis- 
sions. We know the celebrated expression: He was one 
day brave. Humour has its vicissitudes that influence 
our most intimate sentiments. The purest, the most 
ideal sentiment still pertains on some side to organization. 
The inspiration of the poet, the passion of the lover, the 
enthusiasm of the martyr, have their languors and short- 
comings that often depend on very pitiable material 
causes. On those perpetual fluctuations of sentiment, is 
it possible to ground a legislation equal for all? 

Sympathy and benevolence do not escape the conditions 
of all the phenomena of sensibility. "We do not all possess 
in the same degree the power of feeling what others expe- 
rience. Those who ha\^e suffered most best comprehend 
suffering, and consequently feel for it the most lively com- 
passion. With mere imagination one also represents to 
himself better and feels more what passes in the souls of 
his fellow-man. One feels more sympathy for physical 
pleasures and pains, another for pleasures and pains of 
soul; and each of these sympathies has in each of us its 
degrees and variations. They not only differ, they often 
oppose each other. Sympathy for talent weakens the 
indignation that outraged virtue produces. "We overlook 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES 30o 

many tilings in Voltaire, in Rosseau, in Mirabeau, and we 
excuse them on account of the corruption of their century. 
The sympathy caused by the pain of a condemned person 
renders less lively the just antipathy excited by his crime. 
Thus turns and wavers at each step that sympathy which 
some would set up as the supreme arbiter of the good. 
Benevolence does not vary less. We have souls naturally 
more or less affectionate, more or less animated. And, 
then, like sympathy, benevolence receives the counter- 
stroke of different passions that are mingled with it. 
Friendship, for example, often renders us, in spite of 
ourselves, more benevolent than justice would wish. 

Is it not a rule of prudence not to listen to, without 
always disdaining them, the inspirations — often capricious 
— of the heart? Governed by reason, sentiment becomes 
to it an admirable support. But, delivered up to itself, 
in a little while it degenerates into passion, and passion is 
fantastic, excessive, unjust; it gives to the soul spring 
and energy, but generally troubles and perverts it. It is 
even not very far from egoism, and it usually terminates 
in that, wholly generous as it is or seems to be in the 
beginning. Unless we always keep in sight the good 
and the inflexible obligation that, is attached to it, 
unless we always keep in sight this fixed and immutable 
point, the soul knows not where to betake itself on that 
moving ground that is called sensibility; it floats from 
sentiment to passion, from generosity to selfishness, as- 
cending one day to the pitch of enthusiasm, and the next 
day descending to all the miseries of personality. 

Thus the ethics of sentiment, although superior to those 
of interest, are not less insufficient: — 1st, They give as 



304 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

the foundation of the idea of the good what is founded on 
this same idea; 2nd, The rule that they propose is too 
mobile to be universally obligatory. 1 

There is another system of which I will also say, as of 
the preceding, that it is not false, but incomplete and in- 
sufficient. 

The partisans of the ethics of utility and happiness have 
tried to save their principle by generalizing it. According 
to them, the good can be nothing but happiness ; but 
egoism is wrong in understanding by that the happiness 
of the individual ; we must understand by it the general 
happiness. 

Let us establish, in the first place, that the new princi- 
ple is entirely opposed to that of personal interest, for, 
according to circumstances, it may demand, not only a 
passing sacrifice, but an irreparable sacrifice, that of life. 
Now, the wisest calculations of personal interest cannot 
go thus far. 

And, notwithstanding, this principle is far from contain- 
ing true ethics and the whole of ethics. 

The principle of general interest leans towards disinte- 
restedness, and this is certainly much ; but disinterested- 

1 We do not grow weary of citing M. Boyer-Collard. He has marked 
the defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from 
which we borrow some traits. (Euvres de Beid, vol. hi., p. 410, 411: 
"The perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied 
by an emotion of the soul that is called sentiment. Sentiment is a support 
of nature that invites us to good by the attraction of the noblest joys of 
which man is capable, and tnrns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, 
the horror with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contempla- 
tion of a beautiful action or a noble character, at the same time that we 
perceive these qualities of the action and the character (perception, which 
is a judgment), we feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and 
sometimes an admiration tliat is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose 
and perfidious character, excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 305 

ness is the condition of virtue, not virtue itself. We may 
commit an injustice with the most entire disinterested- 
ness. From the fact that an action does not profit him 
who does it, it does not follow that it may not be in itself 
very unjust. In seeking general interest before all, we 
escape, it is true, that vice of soul which is called selfish- 
ness, but we may fall into a thousand iniquities. Or, 
indeed, it must be felt, that general interest is always 
conformed to justice. But these two ideas are not ade- 
quate to each other. If they very often go together, 
they are sometimes also separated. Themistocles pro- 
posed to the Athenians to burn the fleet of the allies 
that was in the port of Athens, and thus to secure to 
themselves the supremacy. The project is useful, says 
Aristides, but it is unjust, and on account of this simple 
speech, the Athenians renounce an advantage that must 
be purchased by an injustice. Observe that Themistocles 
had no particular interest in that; he thought only of the 
interest of his country. But, had he hazarded or given 
his life in order to engage the Athenians in such an act, 
he would only have been consecrating — what has often 
been seen — an admirable devotion to a course in itself 
immoral. 

internal approbation of conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to 
the perception of the moral qnalities of our own actions. ... I do 
not weaken the part of sentiment; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly 
in sentiment; if we maintain this, we annihilate moral distinctions. . . . 
Let ethics be wholly in sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is 
in itself evil; good and evil are relative; the qualities of human actions are 
precisely such as each one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you 
change every thing; the same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, 
according to the affection of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions 
are only physical phenomena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue, 
into pleasure, honesty into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: Dii 
meliora piii /" 





:>06 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

To this it is replied, that if, in the example cited, jus- 
tice and interest exclude each other, it is because the in- 
terest was not sufficiently general ; and the celebrated 
maxim is arrived at, that one must sacrifice himself to 
his family, his family to the city, the city to country, 
country to humanity, that, in fine, the good is the interest 
of the greatest number. 1 

When you have gone thus far, you have not yet attain- 
ed even the idea of justice. The interest of humanity, 
like that of the individual, may accord in fact with jus- 
tice, for in that there is certainly no incompatibility, but 
the two things are none the more identical, so that we 
cannot say with exactness that the interest of humanity 
is the foundation of justice. A single case, even a single 
hypothesis, in which the interest of humanity should not 
accord with the good, is sufficient to enable us to conclude 
that one is not essentially the other. 

We go farther : if it is the interest of humanity that 
constitutes and measures justice, that only is unjust which 
this interest declares to be so. But you are not able to 
affirm absolutely, that, in any circumstance, the interest of 
humanity will not demand such or such an action: and if 
it demands it, by virtue of your principle, it will be neces- 
sary to do it, whatever it may be, and to do it in as much 
as it is just. 

You order me to sacrifice particular interest to general 
interest. But in the name of what do you order me to do 
this? Is it in the name of interest? If interest, as such, 
must touch me, evidently my interest must also touch 

1 In this formula is recognised the system of Bentham, who, for some 
time, had numerous partisans in England, and even in France. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 307 

me, and I do not see why I should sacrifice it to that of 
others. 

The supreme end of human life, you say, is happiness. 
I hence conclude very reasonably, that the supreme end 
of my life is my happiness. 

In order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it 
must he called for by some other principle than happiness 
itself. 

Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the 
greatest good of the greatest number condemns me. I 
have already much difficulty in discerning my true inte- 
rest in the obscurity of the future ; by substituting for 
the infallible voice of justice the uncertain calculations of 
personal interest, you have not rendered action easy for 
for me ; x but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary to 
seek, before acting, what is the interest not only of my- 
self, but of my family, not only of my family, but of my 
country, not only of my country, but of humanity. What ! 
must I embrace the entire world in my foresight? What! 
is such the price of virtue? You impose upon me a 
knowledge that God alone possesses. Am I in his coun- 
sels so as to adjust my actions according to his decrees? 
The philosophy of history and the wisest diplomacy are 
not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well. Ima- 
gine., therefore, that there is no mathematical science of 
human life. Chance and liberty confound the profoundest 
calculations, overturn the best established fortunes, re- 
lieve the most desperate miseries, mingle good fortune 
and bad, confound all foresight. 

And would you establish ethics on a foundation so 
mobile? How much place you leave for sophism in that 

1 See lecture 12. 



308 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

complaisant and enigmatical law of general interest. 1 It 
will not be very difficult always to find some remote 
reason of general interest, which will excuse us from being 
faithful in the present moment to our friends, when they 
shall be in misfortune. A man in adversity addresses 
himself to my generosity. But could I not employ my 
money in a way more useful to humanity? Will not the 
country have need of it to-morrow? Let us virtuously 
keep it for the country then. Moreover, even where the 
interest of all seems evident, there still remains some 
chance of error; it is, therefore, better to withhold. It 
will always be wisdom to withhold. Yes, when it is neces- 
sary, in order to do well, to be sure of serving the greatest 
interest of the greatest number, none but the rash and 
senseless will dare to act. The principle of general inte- 
rest will produce, I admit, great devotedncss, but it will 
also produce great crimes. Is it not in the name of this 

1 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174 : " If the good is that alone which must be 
the most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be found, and 
who can discern it ? In order to know whether such an action, which I 
propose to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in spite of its visi- 
ble and direct utility in the present moment, that it will not become in- 
jurious in a future that I do not yet know. I must seek whether, useful 
to mine and those that surround me, it will not have counter-strokes dis- 
astrous to the human race, of which I must think before all. It is impor- 
tant that I should know whether the money that I am tempted to give this 
unfortunate who needs it, could not be otherwise more usefully employed. 
In fact, the rule is here the greatest good of the greatest number. In 
order to follow it, what calculations are imposed on me? In the obscurity of 
the future, in the uncertainty of the somewhat remote consequences of 
every action, the surest way is to do nothing that is not related to myself, 
and the last result of a prudence so refined is indifference and egoism. 
Supposing you have received a deposit from an opulent neighbour, who is 
old and sick, a sum of which he has no need, and without which your 
numerous family runs the risk of dying with famine. He calls on you for 
this sum, — what will you do? The greatest number is on your side, and 
the greatest utility also; for this sum is insignificant for your rich neigh- 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 309 

principle that fanatics of every kind, fanatics in religion, 
fanatics in liberty, fanatics in philosophy, taking it upon 
themselves to understand the eternal interest of human- 
ity, have engaged in abominable acts, mingled often with 
a sublime disinterestedness? 

Another error of this system is that it confounds the 
good itself with one of its applications. If the good is the 
greatest interest of the greatest number, the consequence 
is clear, that there are only public and social ethics, and 
no private ethics ; there is only a single class of duties, 
duties towards others, and there are no duties towards our- 
selves. But this is retrenching precisely those of our 
duties that most surely guarantee the exercise of all the 
rest. 1 The most constant relations that I sustain are with 
that being which is myself. I am my own most habitual 
society. I bear in myself, as Plato 2 has w r ell said, a whole 

bour, whilst it will save your family from misery, and perhaps from death. 
Father of a family, I should like much to know in the name of what prin- 
ciple you would hesitate to retain the sum which is necessary to you? In- 
trepid reasoner, placed in the alternative of killing this sick old man, or of 
letting your wife and children die of hunger, in all honesty of conscience 
you ought to kill him. You have the right, it is even your duty to sacri- 
fice the less advantage of a single person to much the greater advantage of 
a greater number; and since this principle is the expression of true justice, 
you are only its minister in doing what you do. A vanquishing enemy or 
a furious people threaten destruction to a whole city, if there be not de- 
livered up to them the head of such a man, who is, nevertheless, in- 
nocent. In the name of the greatest good of the greatest number, this 
man will be immolated without scruple. It might even be maintained that 
innocent to the last, he has ceased to be so, since he is an obstacle to the 
public good. It having once been declared that justice is the interest of 
the greatest number, the only question is to know where this interest is. 
Now, here, doubt is impossible; therefore, it is perfectly just to offer in 
nocence as a holocaust to public safety. This consequence must be ac- 
cepted, or the principle rejected." 

1 Sse lecture 15, Private and Public Ethics. 

2 Plato, Republic, vol. ix. and x. of our translation. 



olO LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

world of ideas, sentiments, desires, passions, emotions, 
which claim a legislation. This necessary legislation is" 
suppressed. 

Let us also say a word on a system that, under sublime 
appearances, conceals a vicious principle. 

There are persons who believe that they are magnifying 
God, by placing in his will alone the foundation of the 
moral law, and the sovereign motive of humanity in the 
punishments and rewards that it has pleased him to attach 
to the respect and violation of his will. 

Let us understand what we are about in a matter of 
such delicacy. 

It is certain, and we shall establish it for the good, 1 
as we have done for the true and the beautiful, 2 it is 
certain that, from explanations to explanations, we come 
to be convinced that God is definitively the supreme 
principle of ethics, so that it may be very truly said, 
that the good is the expression of his will, since his will 
is itself the expression of the eternal and absolute justice 
that resides in him. God wills, without doubt, that we 
should act according to the law of justice that he has 
put in our understanding and our heart; but it is not 
at all necessary to conclude that he has arbitrarily insti- 
tuted this law. Far from that, justice is in the will of 
God only because it has its roots in his intelligence and 
wisdom, that is to say, in his most intimate nature and 
essence. 

While making, then, every reservation in regard to what 
is true in the system that founds ethics on the will of God, 
we must show what there is in this system, as it is pre- 

} Lecture 16. 2 Lectures 4 and 7. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. oil 

sented to us, false, arbitrary, and incompatible with ethics 
themselves. 1 

In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, what- 
ever it may be, to institute the good, any more than it 
belongs to it to institute the true and the beautiful. I 
have no idea of the will of God except by my own, to be 
sure with the differences that separate what is finite from 
what is infinite. Now, I cannot by my will found the 
least truth. Is it because my will is limited? No; were 
it armed with infinite power, it would, in this respect, be 
equally impotent. Such is the nature of my will that, in 
doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the oppo- 
site; and that is not an accidental character of the will, it 
is its fundamental character ; if, then, it is supposed that 
truth, or that first part of it which is called justice, has 
been established as it is by an act of volition, human or 
Divine, it must be acknowledged that another act might 
have established it otherwise, and made what is now just 
unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mobility is con- 
trary to the nature of justice and truth. In fact, moral 
truths are as absolute a3 metaphysical truths. Grod can- 
not make effects exist without a cause, phenomena without 
a substance; neither can he make it evil to respect his 

1 This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early 
against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which we 
combat. See our Sketch of a General History of Philosophy, 2nd Series, 
vol. ii. lect. 9, On Scholasticism. Here are two decisive passages from St. 
Thomas, 1st book of the Summation against the Gentiles, chap, lxxxvii : 
"Per praedicta autem excluditur error dicentium omnia procedere a Deo 
secundum simplicem voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat ration em reddere, 
nisi quia Deus vult. Quod etiam divinae Scripturae contrariatur, quae Deum 
perhibet secundum ordinem sapientiae suae omnia fecisse, secundum illud 
Psalm ciii.: omnia in sapientia fecisti." Ibid, book ii. chap xxiv. : " Per 
hoc autem excluditur quorundam error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica di- 
vina voluntate dependere aliqua ratione." 



312 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

word, to love truth, to repress one's passions. The prin- 
ciples of ethics are immutable axioms like those of 
geometry. Of moral laws especially must be said what 
Montesquieu said of all laws in general, — they are 
necessary relations that are derived from the nature of 
things. 

Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived 
from the divine will; on the divine will obligation will 
also rest. But can any will whatever be the foundation of 
obligation ? The divine will is the will of an omnipotent 
being, and I am a feeble being. This relation of a feeble 
being to an omnipotent being, does not contain in itself 
any moral idea. One may be forced to obey the stronger, 
but he is not obligated to do it. The sovereign orders of 
the will of God, if his will could for a moment be separated 
from his other attributes, would not contain the least ray 
of justice; and, consequently, there would not descend 
into my soul the least shade of obligation. 

One will exclaim, — It is not the arbitrary will of God 
that makes the foundation of obligation and justice ; it is 
his just will. Very well. Every thing changes then. It 
is not the pure will of God that obligates us, it is the 
motive itself that determines his will, that is to say, the 
justice passed into his will. The distinction between the 
just and the unjust is not then the work of his will. 

One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will 
of God alone, and then the distinction between good and 
evil, just and unjust, is gratuitous, and moral obliga- 
tion does not exist ; or you give authority to the will of 
God by justice, which, in your hypothesis, must have re- 
ceived from the will of God its authority, which is a petitio 
principii. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 313 

Another petitio priiicipii still more evident. In the 
first place, you are compelled, in order legitimately to draw 
justice from the will of God, to suppose that this will is 
just, or I defy any one to show that this will alone can 
ever form the basis of justice. Moreover, evidently you 
cannot comprehend what a just will of God is, if you do 
not already possess the idea of justice. This idea, then, 
does not come from that of the will of God. 

On the one hand, you may have, and you do have, the 
idea of justice, without understanding the will of God; 
on the other, you cannot conceive the justice of the divine 
will, without having conceived justice elsewhere. 

Are not these reasons sufficient, I pray you, to conclude 
that the sole will of God is not for us the principle of the 
idea of the good ? 

And now, behold the natural consummation of the 
ethical system that we are examining: — the just and the 
unjust are what it has pleased God to declare such, by 
attaching to them the rewards and punishments of an- 
other life. The divine will manifests itself here only by an 
arbitrary order ; it adds to this order promises and threats. 

But to what human faculty are addressed the promise 
and threat of the chastisements and the rewards of another 
life? To the same one that in this life fears pain and 
seeks pleasure, shuns unhappiness and desires happiness, 
that is to say, to sensibility animated by imagination, that 
is to say, again, to what is most changing in each of 
us and most different in the human species. The joys and 
sufferings of another life excite in us the two most vivid 
but most mobile passions, hope and fear. Every thing 
influences our fears and hopes, — aye, health, the passing- 
cloud, a ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes 



.314 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

of this kind. I have known men, even philosophers, who 
on certain days hoped more, and other days less. And 
such a basis some would give to ethics! Then it is doing 
nothing else than proposing for human conduct an inte- 
rested motive. The calculation which I obey is purer, if 
you will; the happiness that one makes me hope for is 
greater ; but I see in that no justice that obligates me, 
no virtue and no vice in me, who know or do not know 
how to make this calculation, not having a head as strong 
as that of Pascal, 1 who yield to or resist those fears and 
hopes according to the disposition of my sensibility and 
my imagination, over which I have no power. Finally, 
the pains and pleasures of the future life are instituted on 
the ground of punishments and rewards. Now, none but 
actions in themselves good or bad can be rewarded and 
punished. If already there is in itself no good, no law 
that in conscience we are obligated to follow, there is 
neither merit nor demerit; recompense is not then recom- 
pense, nor penalty penalty, since they are such only on 
the condition of being the complement and the sanction 
of the idea of the good. Where this idea does not pre- 
exist, there remain, instead of recompense and penalty, 
only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of suffering, 
added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In 
that we come back to the punishments of earth invented 
for the purpose of frightening popular imagination, and 
supported solely on the decrees of legislators, on an ab- 
straction of good and evil, of justice and injustice, of merit 
and demerit. It is the worst human justice that is found 



1 See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul, Des 
Pensees de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235, and p. 289-296. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 315 

thus transported into heaven. We shall see that the human 
soul has foundations somewhat solider. 1 

These different systems, false or incomplete, having- 
heen rejected, we arrive at the doctrine that is to our 
eyes perfect truth, because it admits only certain facts, 
neglects none, and maintains for all of them their charac- 
ter and rank. 

1 Lecture 16. 



316 



LECTURE XIV. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 



Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena. — 
Analysis of each of these facts : — 1st, Judgment and idea of the good. 
That this judgment is absolute. Relation between the true and the 
good. — 2nd, Obligation. Refutation of the doctrine of Kant that 
draws the idea of the good from obligation instead of founding obliga- 
tion on the idea of the good. — 3rd, Liberty, and the moral notions at- 
tached to the notion of liberty. — dth, Principle of merit and demerit. 
Punishments and rewards.- -5th, Moral sentiments. — Harmony of all 
these facts in nature and science. 



Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the 
errors of systems; it especially consists in recognising and 
disengaging the truths mixed with these errors. The 
truths scattered in different systems compose the whole 
truth which each of these almost always expresses on a 
single side. So, the systems that we have just run over 
and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and 
opposed to each other, all the essential elements of human 
morality. The only question is to collect them, in order 
to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The history of 
philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or con- 
firms psychological analysis, as psychological analysis re- 
ceives from the history of philosophy its light. Let us, 
then, interrogate ourselves in presence of human actions, 
and faithfully collect, without altering them by any pre- 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 317 

conceived system, the ideas and the sentiments of every 
kind that the spectacle of these actions produce in us. 

There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to 
us, that procure us advantages or injure us, in a word, 
that are, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, 
'addressed to our interest. We are rejoiced with actions 
that are useful to us, and shun those that may injure us. 
We seek earnestly and with the greatest effort what seems 
to us our interest. 

This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that 
is not less incontestable. 

There are actions that have no relation to us, that, con- 
sequently, we cannot estimate and judge on the ground of 
our interest, that we nevertheless qualify as good or bad. 
Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, 
falls upon another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he 
maltreats and kills, in order to take away his purse. Such 
an action does not reach you in any way, and, notwith- 
standing, it fills you with indignation. 1 You do every 
thing in your power that this murderer may be arrested 
and delivered up to justice ; you demand that he shall be 
punished, and if he is punished in one way or another, 
you think that it is just; your indignation is appeased 
only after a chastisement proportioned to the crime com- 
mitted has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in 
this you neither hope nor fear anything for yourself. 
Were you placed in an inaccessible fortress, from the top 
of which you might witness this scene of murder, you 
would feel these sentiments none the less. 

This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you 
at the sight of a crime. Apply now a little reflection and 

1 On indignation, see lecture 11. 



618 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

analysis to the different traits of which this picture is 
composed, without destroying their nature,. and you will 
have a complete philosophic theory. 

What is it that first strikes you in what you have expe- 
rienced? It is doubtless the indignation, the instinc- 
tive horror that you have felt. There is, then, in the soul 
a power of raising indignation that is foreign to all per- 
sonal interests! There are, then, in us sentiments of 
which we are not the end ! There is an antipathy, an 
aversion, a horror, that are not related to what injures us, 
but to acts whose remotest influence cannot reach us, that 
we detest for the sole reason that we judge them to be 
bad! 

Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is envel- 
oped under the sentiments that we have just mentioned. 
In fact, in the midst of the indignation that transports 
you, let one tell you that all this generous anger pertains 
to your particular organization, and that, after all, the 
action that takes place is indifferent, — you revolt against 
such an explanation, you exclaim that the action is bad 
in itself; you not only express a sentiment, you pro- 
nounce a judgment. The next day after the action, when 
the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, 
you none the less still judge that the action was bad ; 
you judge thus six months after, you judge thus always 
and everywhere; and it is because you judge that this 
action is in itself bad, that you bear this other judgment, 
that it should not have been done. 

This double judgment is at the foundation of senti- 
ment ; otherwise sentiment would be without reason. If 
the action is not bad in itself, if he who has done it was 
not obligated not to do it, the indignation that we expe- 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 31 9 

rience is only a physical emotion, an excitement of the 
senses, of the imagination, of the heart, — a phenomenon 
destitute of every moral character, like the trouble that 
visits us before some frightful scene of nature. You can- 
not rationally feel indignation for the author of an indif- 
ferent action. Every sentiment of disinterested anger 
against the author of an action supposes in him who feels 
it, this double convicti on : —1 st, That the action is in 
itself bad; 2nd, That it should not have been done. 

This sentiment also supposes that the author of this 
action has himself a consciousness of the evil that he has 
done, and of the obligation that he has violated; for 
without this he would have acted like a brutal and blind 
force, not like an intelligent and moral force, and we 
should have felt towards him no more indignation than 
towards a rock that falls on our head, towards a torrent 
that sweeps us away into an abyss. 

Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object 
of it another character still, to wit, that he is free, — that 
he could do or not do what he has done. It is evident 
that the agent must be free in order to be responsible. 

You desire that the murderer may be arrested and de- 
livered up to justice, you desire that he may be punished ; 
when he has been arrested, delivered up to justice and 
punished, you are satisfied. What does that mean ? Is 
it a capricious movement of the imagination and heart ? 
No. Calm or indignant, at the moment of the crime]or a 
long time after, without any spirit of personal vengeance, 
since you are not the least interested in this affair, you 
none the less declare that the murderer ought to be 
punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the cul- 
pable man makes his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you 



320 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

still declare that, far from deserving prosperity, he de- 
serves to suffer in reparation of his fault; you protest 
against lot, and appeal to a superior justice. This judg- 
ment philosophers have called the judgment of merit 
and demerit. I suppose, in the mind of man, the idea of 
a supreme law that attaches happiness to virtue, unhap- 
piness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the 
judgment of merit and demerit is without foundation. 
Omit this judgment, and indignation against prosperous 
crime and the neglect of virtue is an unintelligible, even 
an impossible sentiment, and never, at the sight of crime, 
would you think of demanding the chastisement of a cri- 
minal. 

All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected 
together ; all are equally certain parts, — destroy one, and 
you completely overturn the whole phenomenon. The 
most common observation bears witness to all these facts, 
and the least subtle logic easily discovers their connexion. 
It is necessary to renounce even sentiment, or it must be 
avowed that sentiment covers a judgment, the judgment 
of the essential distinction between good and evil, that 
this distinction involves an obligation, that this obliga- 
tion is applied to an intelligent and free agent ; in fine, 
it must be observed that the distinction between merit 
and demerit, that corresponds to the distinction between 
good and evil, contains the principle of the natural har- 
mony between virtue and happiness. 

What have we done thus far ? We have done as the 
physicist or chemist does, who submits a composite body 
to analysis and reduces it to its simple elements. The 
only difference here is that the phenomenon to which our 
analysis is applied is in us, instead of being out of us. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS, 321 

Besides, the processes employed are exactly the same ; 
there is in them neither system nor hypothesis ; there 
are only experience and the most immediate induction. 

In order to render experience more certain, we may 
vary it. Instead of examining what takes place in us 
when we are spectators of bad or good actions in another, 
let us interrogate our own consciousness when we are 
doing well or ill. In this case, the different elements of 
the moral phenomenon are still more striking, and their 
order appears more distinctly. 

Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more 
or less important deposit, charging me to remit it after 
his death to a person whom he has designated to me 
alone, and who himself knows not what has been done in 
his favour. He who confided to me theibeposit dies, and 
carries with him his secret ; he for whom the deposit has 
been made to me has no knowledge of it ; if, then, I wish 
to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one will ever be 
able to suspect me. In this case what should I do ? It 
is difficult to imagine circumstances more favourable for 
crime. If I consult only interest, I ought not to hesitate 
to return the deposit. If I hesitate, in the system of 
interest, I am senseless, and I revolt against the law of 
my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is as- 
sured me, would betray in me a principle different from 
interest. 

But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most 
entire certainty, that the deposit confided to me does not 
belong to me, that it has been confided to me to be 
remitted to another, and that to this other it belongs. 
Take away interest, and I should not even think of re- 
turning this deposit, — it is interest alone that tempts me. 



322 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

It tempts me, it does not bear me away without resistance. 
Hence the struggle between interest and duty, — a struggle 
filled with troubles, opposite resolutions, by turns taken 
and abandoned ; it energetically attests the presence of 
a principle of action different from interest and quite as 
powerful. 

Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it, I retain the 
deposit that has been confided to me, and apply it to my 
own wants, and to the wants of my family; it makes me 
rich, and in appearance happy; but I internally suffer 
with that bitter and secret suffering that is called remorse. 1 
The fact is certain ; it has been a thousand times described ; 
all languages contain the word, and there is no one who, 
in some degree, has not experienced the thing, that sharp 
gnawing at the heart which is caused by every fault, great 
or small, as long as it has not been expiated. This pain- 
ful recollection follows me in the midst of pleasures and 
prosperity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to 
silence this inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin 
and crime, an accumulation of oft-repeated faults, can 
compass this sentiment at once avenging and expiatory. 
When it is stifled, every resource is lost, and an end is 
made of the soul's life ; as long as it endures, the sacred 
fire is not wholly extinguished. 

Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In 
remorse I do not suffer on account of such an impression 
made upon my senses, nor on account of the thwarting of 
my natural passions, nor on account of the injury done or 
threatened to my interest, nor by the disquietude of my 
hopes and the agony of my fears : no, I suffer without 
any external cause, yet I suffer in the most cruel manner. 

1 On remor.se, see lecture 11. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 323 

I suffer for the sole reason that I have a consciousness of 
having committed a bad action which I knew I was obli- 
gated not to commit, which I was able not to commit, 
which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be 
deserved. Xo exact analysis can take away from remorse, 
without destroying it, a single one of these elements. 
Remorse contains the idea of good and evil, of an obliga- 
tory law, of liberty, of merit and demerit. All these ideas 
were already in the struggle between good and evil ; they 
reappear in remorse. In vain interest counselled me to 
appropriate the deposit that had been confided to me; 
something said to me, and still says to me, that to appro- 
priate it is to do evil, is to commit an injustice ; I judged, 
and judge, thus, not such a day, but always, not under such 
a circumstance, but under all circumstances. In vain I 
say to myself that the person to whom I ought to remit 
this deposit has no need of it, and that it is necessary to 
me ; I judge that a deposit must be respected without re- 
gard to persons, and the obligation that is imposed on me 
appears inviolable and absolute. Having taken upon my- 
self this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I have 
the power to fulfil it ; this is not all ; I am directly con- 
scious of this power, I know with the most certain know- 
ledge that I am able to keep this deposit or to remit it to 
the lawful owner; and it is precisely because I am con- 
scious of this power that I judge that I have deserved 
punishment for not having made the use of it for which it 
was given me. It is, in fine, because I have a lively con- 
sciousness of all that, that I experience this sentiment of 
indignation against myself, this suffering of remorse which 
expresses in itself the moral phenomenon entire. 

According to the rules of the experimental method, let 



•324 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

us take an opposite course ; let us suppose that, in spite 
of the suggestions of interest, in spite of the pressing 
goad of misery, in order to be faithful to pledged faith, I 
send the deposit to the person that had been designated 
to me; instead of the painful scene that just now passed in 
consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but very 
different. I know that I have done well; I know that I 
have not obeyed a chimera, an artificial and mendacious 
law, but a law true, universal, obligatory upon all intelli- 
gent and free beings. I know that I have made a good use 
of my liberty; I have of this liberty, by the very use that 
I have made of it, a sentiment more distinct, more ener- 
getic, and, in some sort, triumphant. Every opinion would 
accuse me in vain, I appeal from it to a better justice, 
and this justice is already declared in me by sentiments 
that press upon each other in my soul. I respect myself, 
esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to the 
esteem of others ; I have the sentiment of my dignity ; I 
feel for myself only sentiments of affection opposed to that 
species of horror for myself with which I was just now in- 
spired. Instead of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy 
that no one can deprive me of, that, were every thing else 
wanting to me, would console and support me. This sen- 
timent of pleasure is as penetrating, as profound as was 
the remorse. It expresses the satisfaction of all the ge- 
nerous principles of human nature, as remorse represented 
their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it 
gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and 
virtue, whilst remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, 
that chain of iron and adamant, which, according to Plato, 1 

1 See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 325 

binds pain to transgression, trouble to passion, misery to 
faithlessness, vice, and crime. 

Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments 
and entire moral life. It is so striking that it has been 
regarded by a somewhat superficial philosophy as sufficient 
to found entire ethics; and, nevertheless, we have just 
seen that this admirable sentiment would not exist with- 
out the different judgments that we have just enumerated; 
it is their consequence, but not their principle ; it supplies, 
but does not constitute them ; it does not take their place, 
but sums them up. 

Now that we are in possession of all the elements of 
human morality, we proceed to take these elements one 
by one, and submit them to a detailed analysis. 

That which is most apparent in the complex pheno- 
menon that we are studying is sentiment ; but its founda- 
tion is judgment. 

The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all 
that follows it ; but this judgment rests only on the con- 
stitution itself of human nature, like the judgment of the 
true and the judgment of the beautiful. As well as these 
two judgments, 1 that of the good is a simple, primitive, 
indecomposable judgment. 

Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear 
this judgment in presence of certain acts ; and, in fearing 
it, we know that it does not make good or evil, but de- 
clares it. The reality of moral distinctions is revealed by 
this judgment, but it is independent of it, as beauty is 
independent of the eye that perceives it, as universal and 
necessary truths are independent of the reason that dis- 
covers them. 2 

1 Lectures 1 and 0. 2 Lectures 2, Z, and 6. 



326 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

Good and evil are real characters of human actions, al- 
though these characters might not be seen with our eyes 
nor touched with our hands. The moral qualities of an 
action are none the less real for not being confounded 
with the material qualities of this action. This is the 
reason why actions materially identical may be morally 
very different. A homicide is always a homicide; never- 
theless, it is often a crime, it is also often a legitimate 
action, for example, when it is not done for the sake of 
vengeance, nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of 
self-defence. 

It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it 
is the spilling of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, 
good and evil, do not reside in such or such an external 
circumstance determined one for all. Reason recognises 
them with certainty under the most different appearances, 
in circumstances sometimes the same and sometimes dis- 
similar. 

Good and evil almost always appear to us connected 
with particular actions; but it is not on account of what 
is particular in them that these actions are good or bad. 
So when I declare that the death of Socrates is unjust, 
and that the devotion of Leonidas is admirable, it is the 
unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, and the de- 
votion of a hero that I admire. It is not important 
whether this hero be called Leonidas or d'Assas, whether 
the immolated sage be called Socrates or Bailly. 

The judgment of the good is at first applied to particu- 
lar actions, and it gives birth to general principles which 
in course serve us as rules for judging all actions of the 
same kind. As after having judged that such a particu- 
lar phenomenon has such a particular cause, we elevate 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 327 

ourselves to the general principle that every phenomenon 
has its cause; 1 so we erect into a general rule the moral 
judgment that vre have home in regard to a particular 
fact. Thus, at first we admire the death of Leonidas, 
thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it is 
good to die for one's country. We already possess the 
principle in its first application to Leonidas; otherwise, 
this particular application would not have been legitimate, 
it would not have been even possible; but we possess it 
implicitly; as soon as it is disengaged, it appears to us 
under its universal and pure form, and we apply it to all 
analogous cases. 

Ethics have their axioms like other sciences; and these 
axioms are rightly called in all languages moral truths. 

It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also 
involved a truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth 
of things, — its good is only derived. Moral truths consi- 
dered in themselves have no less certainty than mathe- 
matical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I ask 
whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily 
attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the 
idea that its three angles are equal to two right angles. 
You may withhold a deposit ; but, in withholding it, do 
not believe that you change the nature of things, nor that 
you make it possible for a deposit ever to become pro- 
perty. These two ideas exclude each other. You have 
only a false semblance of property; and all the efforts of 
passion, all the sophisms of interest will not reverse the 
essential differences. This is the reason why moral truth 
is so troublesome, — it is because, like all truth, it is what 
it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always the same 

1 1st part, lecture 2. 



328 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexor- 
ably condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always 
listened to, the sensible and the culpable will which thinks 
to hinder it from being by denying it, or rather by pre- 
tending te deny it- 
Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by 
the singular character that, as soon as we perceive them, 
they appear to us as the rule of our conduct. If it is true, 
that a deposit is made to be remitted to its legitimate 
possessor, it is necessary to remit it to him. To the neces- 
sity of believing is here added the necessity of prac- 
tising. 

The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, 
in the eyes of reason necessary, are to the will obligatory. 
Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foun- 
dation, is absolute. As necessary truths are not more 
or less necessary, 1 so obligation is not more or less obliga- 
tory. There are degrees of importance between different 
obligations ; but there are no degrees in the same obliga- 
tion. "We are not somewhat obligated, almost obligated ; 
we are either wholly obligated, or not at all. 

If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. 
For, if the obligation of to-day were not the obligation of 
to-morrow, if what is obligatory for me w r ere not so for 
you, obligation would differ from itself, would be relative 
and contingent. 

This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation 
is so certain and so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of 
the doctrine of interest to obscure it, that one of the pro- 
foundcst moralists of modern philosophy, particularly 
struck with this fact, has regarded it as the principle of 

1 Lecture 2. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 3^9 

the whole of ethics. By separating duty from interest 
which ruins it, and from sentiment which enervates it* 
Kant restored to ethics their true character. He elevated 
himself very high in the century of Helvetius, in elevat- 
ing himself to the holy law of duty; but he still did not 
ascend high enough, he did not reach the reason itself of 
duty. 

The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, 
whence comes the obligation of performing an action, if 
not from the intrinsic goodness of this act ? Is it not be- 
cause that, in the order of reason, it is absolutely impossi- 
ble to regard a deposit as a property, that we cannot appro- 
priate it to ourselves without a crime ? If one action must 
be performed, and another action must not, it is because 
there is apparently aja * essential difference between these 
two acts. To found the good on obligation, instead of 
founding obligation on the good, is, therefore, to take the 
effect for the cause, is to draw the principle from the con- 
sequence. 

If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions 
of misery, has respected the deposit that was entrusted to 
him, why he respected it, he will answer me, — because it 
was my duty. If I persist, and ask why it was his duty, he 
will very rightly answer, — because it was just, because it 
was good. That point having been reached, all answers 
are stopped; but questions also are stopped. No one 
allows a duty to be imposed upon him without rendering 
to himself a reason for it ; but as soon as it is recognised 
that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, the 
mind is satisfied ; for it reaches a principle beyond which 
it has nothing more to seek, justice being its own princi- 
ple. First truths carry with them their reason for being. 



330 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

Now, justice, the essential distinction between good and 
evil in the relations of men among themselves, is the pri- 
mary truth of ethics. 

Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to 
another more elevated principle ; and duty is not, rigor- 
rously speaking, a principle, since it supposes a principle 
above it, that explains and authorises it, to wit, justice. 

Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, 
to take for a moment the language of Kant, in appearing 
to us obligatory, than truth becomes relative and subjective 
in appearing to us necessary; for in the very nature of 
truth and the good must be sought the reason of necessity 
and obligation. But if we stop at obligation and neces- 
sity\ as Kant did, in ethics as well as in metaphysics, 
without knowing it, and even against our intention, we 
destroy, or at least weaken truth and the good. 1 

Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinc- 
tion between good and evil ; and is itself the founda- 
tion of liberty. If man has duties, he must possess the 
faculty of fulfilling them, of resisting desire, passion, and 
interest, in order to obey law. He ought to be free, 
therefore he is free, or human nature is in contradiction 
with itself. The direct certainty of obligation implies 
the corresponding certainty of liberty. 

This proof of liberty is doubtless good ; but Kant is 
deceived in supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is 
very strange that he should have preferred the authority 
of reasoning to that of consciousness, as if the former had 
no need of being confirmed by the latter ; as if, after all, 
my liberty ought not to be a fact for me. 2 Empiricism 

1 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture 8. 

2 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 331 

must be greatly feared to distrust the testimony of con- 
sciousness ; and, after such a distrust, one must be very 
credulous to have a boundless faith in reasoning*. We do 
not believe in our liberty as we believe in the movement 
of the earth. The profoundest persuasion that we have 
of it comes from the continual experience that we carry 
with ourselves. 

Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am 
able to will or not to will to do it ? In that lies the whole 
question of liberty. 

Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing 
and the power of willing. The will has, without doubt, 
in its service and under its empire, the most of our facul- 
ties ; but that empire, which is real, is very limited. I 
will to move my arm, and I am often able to do it, — in 
that resides, as it were, the physical power of will ; but I 
am not always able to move my arm, if the muscles are 
paralyzed, if the obstacle to be overcome is too strong, 
kc. ; the execution does not always depend on me ; but 
what always depends on me is the resolution itself. The 
external effects may be hindered, my resolution itself 
can never be hindered. In its own domain, will is sove- 
reign. 

And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. 
I feel in myself, before its determination, the force that 
can determine itself in such a manner or in such another. 
At the same time that I will this or that, I am equally 
conscious of the power to will the opposite ; I am con- 
scious of being master of my resolution, of the ability to 
arrest it, continue it, repress it. When the voluntary act 
ceases, the consciousness of the power does not cease, — it 
remains with the power itself, which is superior to all its 



o'.l'l LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

manifestations. Liberty is therefore the essential and 
ahvavs- subsisting attribute of will. 1 

The will, we have seen, 2 is neither desire nor passion, — 
it is exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the 
licence of desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and 
passion, he is free only in will. That they may not else- 
where be confounded, liberty and anarchy must not be 
confounded in psychology. Passions abandoning them- 
selves to their caprices, is anarchy. Passions concen- 
trated upon a dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty 
consists in the struggle of will against this tyranny and 
this anarchy. But this combat must have an aim, and 
this aim is the duty of obeying reason, which is our true 
sovereign, and justice, which reason reveals to us and pre- 
scribes for us. The duty of obeying reason is the law of 
will, and will is never more itself than when it submits to 
its law. We do not possess ourselves, as long as to the 
domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason does 
not oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and jus- 
tice free us from the yoke of passions, without imposing 
upon us another yoke. For, once more, to obey them, is 
not to abdicate liberty, but to save it, to apply it to its 
legitimate use. 

It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with 
reason and justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak 
properly. He is a person only because he is a free being 
enlightened by reason. 

What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is 

1 See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, 
vol. iii., lecture 1, Locke, p. 71; lecture 3, Condillac, p. 116, 149, etc.; 
vol. iv., lecture 23, Reid, p. 541-574 ; 2nd Series, vol. iii., Examination 
of the System of LocJce, lecture 25. 

2 Lecture 12. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. SSo 

especially the difference between liberty and its opposite. 
A tiling is that which is not free, consequently that 
which does not belong to itself, that which has no self, 
which has only a numerical individuality, a perfect effigy 
of true individuality, which is that of person. 

A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first 
person that takes possession of it and puts his mark on it. 

A thing is not responsible for the movements which it 
has not willed, of which it is even ignorant. Person 
alone is responsible, for it is intelligent and free; and it 
is responsible for the use of its intelligence and freedom. 

A thing has no dignity ; dignity is only attached to 
person. 

A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which 
person confers on it. It is purely an instrument whose 
whole value consists in the use that the person using it 
derives from it. 1 

Obligation implies liberty ; where liberty is not, duty 
is wanting, and with duty right is wanting also. 

It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, 
that I have the duty of respecting it, and the right to 
make it respected by you. My duty is the exact measure 
of my right. The one is in direct ratio with the other. 
If I had no sacred duty to respect what makes my person, 
that is to say, my intelligence and my liberty, I should 
not have the right to defend it against your injuries. 
But as my person is inviolable and sacred in itself, it fol- 
lows that, considered in relation to me, it imposes on me 
a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on 
me a right. 

1 See lit Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true principle 
of polite 1 economy, p. 278-302. 



334 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that 
I am by abandoning myself to passion, to vice and crime, 
and I am not permitted to let it be degraded by you. 

The person is inviolable; and it alone is inviolable. 

It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of 
consciousness, but in all its legitimate manifestations, in 
its acts, in the product of its acts, even in the instru- 
ments that it makes its own by using them. 

Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. 
The first property is the person. All other properties are 
derived from that. Think of it well. It is not property 
in itself that has rights, it is the proprietor, it is the per- 
son that stamps upon it, with its own character, its right 
and its title. 

The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without 
degrading itself, — it is to itself inalienable. The person Has 
no right over itself ; it cannot treat itself as a thing, can- 
not sell itself, cannot destroy itself, cannot in any way 
abolish its free will and its liberty, which are its consti- 
tuent elements. 

Why has the child already some rights ? Because it 
will be a free being. Why have the old man, returned to 
infancy, and the insane man still some rights ? Because 
they have been free beings. We even respect liberty in its 
first glimmerings or its last vestiges. Why, on the other 
hand, have the insane man and the imbecile old man no 
longer all their rights ? Because they have lost liberty. 
Why do we enchain the furious madman ? Because he 
has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an abo- 
minable institution ? Because it is an outrage upon what 
constitutes humanity. This is the reason why, in fine, 
certain extreme devotions are sometimes sublime faults, 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 335 

and no one is permitted to offer them, much less to demand 
them. There is no legitimate devotion against the very 
essence of right, against liberty, against justice, against 
the dignity of the human person. 

We have not been able to speak of liberty, without in- 
dicating a certain number of moral notions of the highest 
importance which it contains and explains; but we could 
not pursue this development without encroaching upon 
the domain of private and public ethics and anticipating 
the following lecture. 

We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phe- 
nomenon, the judgment of merit and demerit. 

At the same time that we judge that a man has done a 
good or bad action, we bear this other judgment quite as 
necessary as the former, to wit, that if this man has acted 
well he has merited a reward, and if he has acted ill, he 
has merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with 
this judgment as with that of the good. It may be out- 
wardly expressed in a more or less lively manner, according 
as it is mingled with more or less energetic feelings. Some- 
times it will be only a benevolent disposition towards the 
virtuous agent, and an unfavourable disposition towards the 
culpable agent; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indig- 
nation. In some cases one will make himself the execu- 
tor of the judgment that he bears, he will crown the hero 
and load the criminal with chains. But when all your feel- 
ings are calmed, when enthusiasm has cooled as well as 
indignation, when time and separation have rendered an 
action almost indifferent to you, you none the less persist 
in judging that the author of this action merits a reward 
or a punishment, according to the quality of the action. 
You decide that you were right in the sentiments that you 



336 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare 
them legitimate. 

The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied 
to the judgment of good and evil. In fact, he who does 
an action without knowing whether it is good or bad, has 
neither merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with him the 
same as with those physical agents that accomplish the 
most beneficent or the most destructive works, to which 
we never think of attributing knowledge and will, conse- 
quently accountability. Why are there no penalties at- 
tached to involuntary crimes ? Because for that very 
reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes 
that the question of premeditation is so grave in all cri- 
minal processes. Why is the child, up to a certain age, 
subject to none but light punishments ? Because where 
the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, merit and 
demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize reward 
and punishment. The author of an injurious but involun- 
tary action is condemned to an indemnity corresponding 
to the damage done ; he is not condemned to a punish- 
ment properly so called. 

Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When 
these conditions are fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest 
themselves, and involve reward and punishment. 

Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded ; de- 
merit the natural right that others have to punish us, 
and, if we may thus speak, the right that we have to be 
punished. This expression may seem paradoxical, never- 
theless it is true. A culpable man, who, opening his eyes 
to the light of the good, should comprehend the necessity 
of expiation, not only by internal repentance, without which 
all the rest is in vain, but also by a real and effective suf- 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OP ETHICS. S3 7 

fering, such a culpable man would have the right to claim 
the punishment that alone can reconcile him with order. 
And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every 
day see criminals denouncing themselves and offering 
themselves up to avenge the public ? Others prefer to 
satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to the pardon 
that law places in the hands of the monarch in order to 
represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals re- 
present in it justice. This is a manifest proof of the 
natural and profound roots of the idea of punishment and 
reward. 

Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful 
debt, punishment and reward; but reward must not be 
confounded with merit, nor punishment with demerit: 
this would be confounding cause and effect, principle and 
consequence. Even were reward and punishment not to 
take place, merit and demerit would subsist. Punishment 
and reward satisfy merit and demerit, but do not consti- 
tute them. Suppress all reward and all punishment, and 
you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit ; on 
the contrary, suppress merit and demerit, and there 
are no longer true punishments and true rewards. Un- 
merited goods and honours are only material advantages; 
reward is essentially moral, and its value is independent 
of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the early 
Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the 
riches in the world, when it is the sign of the recognition 
and the admiration of a people. To reward is to give 
in return. He who is rewarded must have first given 
something in order to deserve to be rewarded. Reward 
accorded to merit is a debt ; reward without merit is a 
charity or a theft. It is the same with punishment. It 



838 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

is the relation of pain to a fault, — in this relation, and 
not in the pain alone, is the truth as well as the shame of 
chastisement. 

Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame. 1 

There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, 
because they are equally true, — the first is, that the good is 
good in itself, and ought to be pursued whatever may be 
the consequences; the second is, that the consequences of 
the good cannot fail to be fortunate. Happiness, sepa- 
rated from the good, is only a fact to which is attached 
no moral idea; but, as an effect of the good, it enters into 
the moral order and completes it. 

Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappi- 
ness, are a contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes 
sacrifice, that is to say, suffering, it is of eternal justice 
that the sacrifice, generously accepted and courageously 
borne, have for a reward the very happiness that has been 
sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice that crime be pu- 
nished by the unhappiness of the culpable happiness which 
it has tried to obtain by stealth. 

Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches 
pleasure and pain to good and evil ? Most of the time 
even here below. For order rules in this world, since the 
world endures. If order is sometimes disturbed, and hap- 
piness and unhappiness are not always distributed in right 
proportion to crime and virtue, still the absolute judgment 
of the good, the absolute judgment of obligation, the ab- 
solute judgment of merit and demerit, subsist inviolable 
and imprescriptible, — we remain convinced that he who 
has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot 
in that fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-es- 

1 Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 339 

tablish the sacred harmony between virtue and happiness 
by the means that to him belong. But the time has not 
come to sound these mysterious prospects. 1 It is sufficient 
for us, but it was necessary to mark them, in order to 
show the nature and the end of moral truth. 

"We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the 
complex phenomenon of morality by recalling that one 
which is the most apparent of all, which, however, is only 
the accompaniment, and, thus to speak, the echo of all 
the others — sentiment. Sentiment has for its object to 
render sensible to the soul the tie between virtue and 
happiness. It is the direct and vital application of the 
law of merit and demerit. It precedes and authorizes the 
punishments and rewards that society institutes. It is 
the internal model according to which the imagination, 
guided by faith, represents to itself the punishments and 
rewards of the divine city. The world that we place be- 
yond this is, in great part, our own heart transported into 
heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just that it should 
return thither. 

We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of 
sentiment; we have sufficiently explained them in the last 
lecture. A few words will replace them under your eyes. 

We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its 
author, another or ourselves, without experiencing a 
particular pleasure, analogous to that which is attached 
to the perception of the beautiful ; and we cannot witness 
a bad action without feeling a contrary sentiment, also ana- 
logous to that which the sight of an ugly and deformed 
object excites in us. This sentiment is profoundly different 
from agreeable or disagreeable sensation. 

1 See lecture 16, God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good. 



340 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

Are we the authors of the good action? We feel a 
satisfaction that we do not confound with any other. It 
is not the triumph of interest nor that of pride, — it is the 
pleasure of modest honesty or dignified virtue that ren- 
ders justice to itself. Are we the authors of the bad 
action? We feel offended conscience groaning within us. 
Sometimes it is only an importunate reclamation, some- 
times it is a bitter agony. Remorse is a suffering the 
more poignant on account of our feeling that it is de- 
served. 

The spectacle of a good action done by another also has 
something delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in 
us that responds to whatever is noble and good in others. 
When interest does not lead us astray, we naturally put 
ourselves in the place of him who has done well. We 
feel in a certain measure the sentiments that animate 
him. We elevate ourselves to the mood of his spirit. Is it 
not already for the good man an exquisite reward to make 
the noble sentiments that animate him thus pass into the 
hearts of his fellow-men? The spectacle of a bad action, 
instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a 
painful and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this senti- 
ment is never acute like remorse. There is in innocence 
something serene and placid that tempers even the senti- 
ment of injustice, even when this injustice falls on us. 
We then experience a sort of shame for humanity, we 
mourn over human weakness, and, by a melancholy return 
upon ourselves, we are less moved to anger than to pity. 
Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous anger, by 
a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a 
sweet reward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm 
almost always fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punish- 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 341 

ment to stir up around us pity, indignation, aversion, and 
contempt. 

Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevo- 
lence for its autlior. He inspires us with an affection- 
ate disposition. Even without knowing it, we would love 
to do good to him ; we desire that he may be happy, be- 
cause we judge that he deserves to be. Antipathy also 
passes from the action to the person and engenders against 
him a sort of bad will for which we do not blame our- 
selves, because we feel it to be disinterested and find it 
legitimate. 

Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, 
and their opposites are sentiments and not judgments ; 
but they are sentiments that accompany judgments, the 
judgment of the good, especially that of merit and de- 
merit. These sentiments have been given us by the sove- 
reign Author of our moral constitution to aid us in 
doing good. In their diversity and mobility, they cannot 
be the foundations of absolute obligation which must be 
equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure 
and beneficent witnesses of the harmony between virtue 
and happiness. 

These are the facts as presented by a faithful descrip- 
tion, as brought to light by a detailed analysis. 

Without facts all is chimera; without a severe distinc- 
tion of facts, all is confusion ; but, also, without the know- 
ledge of their relations, instead of a single vast doctrine, 
like the total phenomenon that we have undertaken to 
embrace, there can be only different systems like the dif- 
ferent parts of this phenomenon, consequently imperfect 
systems, systems always at war with each other. 

We set out from common sense ; for the object of true 



342 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

science is not to contradict common sense, but to explain 
it, and for this end we must commence by recognising it. 
We have at first painted in its simplicity, even in the 
gross, the phenomenon of morality. Then we have se- 
parated its elements, and carefully marked the characteris- 
tic traits of each of them. It only remains for us to 
re-collect them all, to seize their relations, and thus to find 
again, but more precise and more clear, the primitive unity 
that served us as a point of departure. 

Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive 
fact, which rests only on itself, — the judgment of the good. 
We do not sacrifice other facts to that, but we must estab- 
lish that it is the first both in date and in importance. 

By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true 
and the beautiful, the judgment of the good has shown 
us the affinities of ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics. 

The good, so essentially united to the true, is distin- 
guished from it in that it is practical truth. The good is 
obligatory. These two ideas are inseparable, but not 
identical. For obligation rests on the good, — in this inti- 
mate alliance, from the good obligation borrows its univer- 
sal and absolute character. 

The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for 
us the foundation of all ethics. Thereby it is that we 
separate ourselves from the ethics of interest and the 
ethics of sentiment. We admit all the facts, but we do 
not admit them in the same rank. 

To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds 
liberty in action. Liberty is deduced from obligation, 
and moreover it is a fact of an irresistible evidence. 

Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a 
moral person. The idea of person contains several moral 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 34-3 

notions, among others that of right. Person alone can 
have rights. 

To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, 
■which serves as their sanction. 

Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good 
and evil, obligation and liberty, and give birth to the 
idea of reward and punishment. 

It is on the condition that the good may be an object 
of reason, that ethics can have an immovable basis. We 
have therefore insisted on the rational character of the 
idea of the good, but without misconceiving the part of 
sentiment. 

We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which 
is stirred in us in the train of reason itself, from physical 
sensibility, which needs an impression made upon the 
organs in order to enter into exercise. 

All our moral judgments are accompanied by senti- 
ments that respond to them. The sight of an action 
which we judge to be good gives us pleasure, — the con- 
sciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and of 
having performed it freely, is also a pleasure ; the judg- 
ment of merit and demerit makes our hearts beat by tak- 
ing the form of sympathy and benevolence. 

It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it 
ought to be fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal 
almost inaccessible to human weakness, if to its austere 
prescriptions were not added some inspiration of the 
heart. Sentiment is in some sort a natural grace that 
has been given us, either to supply the light of reason 
that is sometimes uncertain, or to succour the will waver- 
ing in the presence of an obscure or painful duty. In 
order to resist the violence of culpable passions, the aid 



344 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

of generous passions is needed ; and when the moral law 
exacts the sacrifice of natural sentiments, of the sweetest 
and most lively instincts, it is fortunate that it can sup- 
port itself on other sentiments, or other instincts which 
also have their charm and their force. Truth enlight- 
ens the mind ; sentiment warms the soul and leads to 
action. It is not cold reason that determines a Codrus 
to devote himself for his countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, 
beneath the steel of the enemy, the generous cry that 
brings him death and saves the army. Let us guard our- 
selves, then, from weakening the authority of sentiment ; 
let us honour and sustain enthusiasm; it is the source 
whence spring great and heroic actions. 

And shall interest be entirely banished from our sys- 
tem ? No ; we recognise in the human soul a desire for 
happiness which is the work of God himself. This desire 
is a fact, — it must then have its place in a system founded 
upon experience. Happiness is one of the ends of human 
nature ; only it is neither its sole end nor its principal 
end. 

Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man ! 
Its supreme end is the good, its law is virtue, which often 
imposes on it suffering, and thereby it is the most excel- 
lent of all things that we know. But this law is very hard 
and in contradiction with the instinct of happiness. Fear 
nothing, — the beneficent author of our being has placed 
in our souls, by the side of the severe law of duty, the 
sweet and amiable force of sentiment, — he has, in general, 
attached happiness to virtue ; and, for the exceptions, for 
there are exceptions, at the end of the course he has 
placed hope. 1 

1 See lecture 16. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 345 

Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to 
express faithfully each fact, to express them all, and to 
make appear at once their differences and their harmony. 

Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. 
To admit only a single fact and to sacrifice to that all the 
rest, — such is the beaten way. Of all the facts that we 
have just analysed, there is not one that has not in its 
turn played the part of sole principle. All the great 
schools of moral philosophy have each seen only one side 
of truth, — fortunate when they have not chosen among 
the different phases of the moral phenomenon, in order to 
found upon them their entire system, precisely those that 
are least adapted to that end ! 

Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most 
manifest facts, against common sense, against the very idea 
of all ethics, found duty, virtue, the good, on the desire 
of happiness alone ? It would be proof of great blind- 
ness and great barrenness. On the other hand, shall we 
immolate the need of happiness, the hope of all reward, 
human or divine, to the abstract idea of the good ? The 
Stoics have done it, — we know with what apparent gran- 
deur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine with 
Kant the whole of ethics to obligation ? That is straitening 
still more a system that is already very narrow. Moreover, 
one may hope to surpass Kant in extent of views, by a 
completer knowledge and more faithful representation of 
facts ; one cannot hope to be more profound in the point of 
view that he has chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, 
shall we refer to the will of God alone the obligation of 
virtue, and found ethics on religion, instead 4 of giving re- 
ligion to ethics as their necessary perfection. We still 
invent nothing new, we only renew the ethics of the 



346 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular 
school which has had for its adversaries the most illus- 
trious doctors. Finally, shall we reduce all morality to 
sentiment, to sympathy, to benevolence ? It only remains 
to follow the footsteps of Hutcheson and Smith, aban- 
doned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of a celebrated 
adversary of Kant, Jacobi. 1 

The time of exclusive theories has gone by; to renew 
them is to perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, 
being founded upon a real fact, rightly refuses the sacri- 
fice of this fact; and it meets in hostile theories an equal 
right and an equal resistance. Hence the perpetual re- 
turn of the same systems, always at war with each other, 
and by turns vanquished and victorious. This strife can 
cease only by means of a doctrine that conciliates all sys- 
tems by comprising all the facts that give them authority. 

It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems 
in history that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts 
in reality. It is, on the contrary, the full possession 
of all the facts, analogous and different, that forces us to 
absolve and condemn all systems on account of the truth 
that is in each of them, and on account of the errors that 
are mixed with the truth. 

It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so 
easy as to arrange a system, by suppressing or altering 
the facts that embarrass it. But is it, then, the object of 
philosophy to produce at any cost a system, instead of 
seeking to understand the truth and express it as it is ? 

It is objected that such a doctrine has not sufficient 
character. But is it not sporting with philosophy to de- 

1 On Jacobi, see Tennemann's Manual of the History of Philosophy, vol. 
iii., p. 318, etc. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 347 

mand of it any other character than that of truth ? Do 
men complain that modern chemistry has not sufficient 
character, because it limits itself to studying facts in their 
relations, and also in their differences, and because it does 
not end at a single substance ? The only true philosophy 
that is proper for a century returned from all exaggera- 
tions, is a picture of human nature whose first merit is 
fidelity, which must offer all the traits of the original in 
their right proportion and real harmony. The unity of 
the doctrine that we profess is in that of the human soul, 
whence we have drawn it. Is it not one and the same 
being that perceives the good, that knows that he is obli- 
gated to fulfil it, that knows that he is free in fulfilling it, 
that loves the good, and judges that the fulfilment or 
violation of the good justly brings after it reward or 
punishment, happiness or misery. We draw, then, a true 
unity from the intimate relation between all the facts 
that, as we have seen, imply and sustain each other. 
But by what right is the unity of a doctrine placed in 
allowing in it only a single principle? Such a unity is 
possible only in those regions of mathematical abstrac- 
tion, where one is not disturbed by what is, where one re- 
trenches at will from the object that he is studying, in 
order to simplify it continually, where every thing is re- 
duced to pure notions. In the reality all is determined, 
and consequently, all is complex. A science of facts is 
not a series of equations. In it must be found again the 
life that is in tilings, life with its harmony doubtless, but 
also with its richness and diversity. 1 

1 On this important question of method, see lecture 12. 



348 



LECTURE XV. 

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 

Application of the preceding principles. — -G-eneral formula of interest, — to 
obey reason. — Rule for judging whether an action is or is not conformed 
to reason,— to elevate the motive of this action into a maxim of univer- 
sal legislation. — Individual ethics. It is not towards the individual, 
but towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all in- 
dividual duties, — to respect and develop the moral person. — Social ethics, 
— duties of justice and duties of charity. — Civil society. Government. 
Law. The right to punish. 

We know that there is moral good and that there is 
moral evil : we know that this distinction between good 
and evil engenders an obligation, a law, duty; but we do 
not yet know what our duties are. The general principle 
of ethics is laid down ; it must be followed at least into 
its most important applications. 

If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is 
known only by reason, to obey the law of duty, is to obey 
reason. 

But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very 
abstract : — how can we be sure that our action is con- 
formed or is not conformed to reason ? 

The character of reason being, as we have said, its uni- 
versality, action, in order to be conformed to reason, must 
possess something universal ; and as it is the motive itself 
of the action that gives it its morality, it is also the 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 349 

motive that must, if the action is good, reflect the charac- 
ter of reason. By what sign, then, do you recognise that 
an action is conformed to reason, that it is good ? By the 
sign that the motive of this action being generalized, ap- 
pears to you a maxim of universal legislation, which rea- 
son imposes upon all intelligent and free beings. If you 
are not able thus to generalize the motive of an action, 
and if it is the opposite motive that appears to you a uni- 
versal maxim, your action, being opposed to this maxim, 
is thereby proved to be contrary to reason and duty, — it 
is bad. If neither the motive of your action nor the mo- 
tive of the opposite action can be erected into a universal 
law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is indifferent. 
Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied to 
the morality of actions. It makes known with the last 
degree of clearness where duty is and where it is not, as 
the severe and naked form of syllogism, being applied to 
reasoning, brings out in the precisest manner its error or 
its truth. 

To obey reason, — such is duty in itself, the duty supe- 
rior to all other duties, giving to all others their founda- 
tion, and being itself founded only on the essential rela- 
tion between liberty and reason. 

It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of 
obeying reason. But man having different relations, this 
single and general duty is determined by these different 
relations, and divided into a corresponding number of 
particular duties. 

Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with 
whom we are more constantly in relation than with our- 
selves. The actions of which man is at once the author 
and the object, have rules as well as other actions. 



350 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

Hence that first class of duties which are called the duties 
of man towards himself. 

At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties 
towards himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. 
What is most to me is myself: — this is the first property 
and the foundation of all other properties. Now, is it not 
the essence of property to be at the free disposition of the 
proprietor, and consequently, am I not able to do with my- 
self what I please ? 

No ; from the fact that man is free, from the fact that 
he belongs only to himself, it must not be concluded that 
he has over himself all power. On the contrary, indeed, 
from the fact alone that he is endowed with liberty, as well 
as intelligence, I conclude that he can no more degrade 
his liberty than his intelligence, without transgressing. It 
is a culpable use of liberty to abdicate it. We have said 
that liberty is not only sacred to others, but is so to itself. 
To subject it to the yoke of passion, instead of increasing 
it under the liberal discipline of duty, is to abase in us 
what deserves our respect as much as the respect of others. 
Man is not a thing ; it has not, then, been permitted him 
to treat himself as a thing. 

If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself 
as an individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence 
that make me a free moral person. It is necessary to distin- 
guish closely in us what is peculiar to us from what per- 
tains to humanity. Each one of us contains in himself 
human nature with all its essential elements ; and, in 
addition, all these elements are in him in a certain man- 
ner that is not the same in two different men. These 
particularities make the individual, but not the person ; 
and the person alone in us is to be respected and held as 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 351 

sacred, because it alone represents humanity. Every 
thing that does not concern the moral person is indiffer- 
ent. In these limits I may consult my tastes, even my 
fancies to a certain extent, because in them there is no- 
thing absolute, because in them good and evil are in no 
way involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral 
person, my liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which 
does not allow liberty to be turned against itself. For 
example, if through caprice, or melancholy, or any other 
motive, I condemn myself to an abstinence too prolonged, 
if I impose on myself vigils protracted and beyond my 
strength; if I absolutely renounce all pleasure, and, by 
these excessive privations, endanger my health, my life, 
my reason, these are no longer indifferent actions. Sick- 
ness, death, madness, may become crimes, if we volunta- 
rily bring them upon ourselves. 

I have not established this obligation of self-respect im- 
posed on the moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. 
Is self-respect founded on one of those arbitrary conven- 
tions that cease to exist when the two contracting parties 
freely renounce them ? Are the two contracting parties 
here me and myself? By no means ; one of the contract- 
ing parties is not me, to wit, humanity, the moral person. 
And there is here neither convention nor contract. By 
the fact alone that the moral person is in us, we are 
obligated towards it, without convention of any sort, 
without contract that can be cancelled, and by the very 
nature of things. Hence it comes that obligation is ab- 
solute. 

Respect of the moral person in us is the general prin- 
ciple whence are derived all individual duties. We will 
cite some of them. 



352 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

The most important, that which governs all others, is 
the duty of remaining master of one's self. One may 
lose possession of himself in two ways, either by allowing 
himself to be carried awa} r , or by allowing himself to be 
overcome, by yielding to enervating passions or to over- 
whelming passions, to anger or to melancholy. On either 
hand there is equal weakness. And I do not speak of the 
consequences of those vices for society and ourselves, — 
certainly they are very injurious ; but they are much 
worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, be- 
cause in themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, 
because they diminish liberty and disturb intelligence. 

Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble 
prudence that is the moderation in all things, the fore- 
sight, the fitness, that preserve at once from negligence 
and that rashness which adorns itself with the name of 
heroism, as cowardice and selfishness sometimes usurp 
the name of prudence. Heroism, without being premedi- 
tated, ought always to be rational. One may be a hero 
at intervals; but, in every-day life, it is sufficient to be a 
wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our life, 
and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness 
or bravado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubt- 
less w r e must know how to dare, but still prudence is, if 
not the principle, at least the rule of courage ; for true 
courage is not a blind transport, it is before all coolness 
and self-possession in danger. Prudence also teaches 
temperance ; it keeps the soul in that state of moderation 
without which man is incapable of recognising and prac- 
tising justice. _This is the reason why the ancients said 
that prudence js the mother and guardian of all the vir- 
tues. Prudence is the government of liberty by reason, 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 353 

as imprudence is liberty escaped from reason: — on the 
one side, order, the legitimate subordination of our facul- 
ties to each other; on the other, anarchy and revolt. 1 

Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking 
the natural alliance between man and truth, deprives him 
of that which makes his dignity. This is the reason why 
there is no graver insult than giving the lie, and why the 
most honoured virtues are sincerity and frankness. 

One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in 
its instruments. For this reason the body is to man the 
object of imperative duties. The body may become an 
obstacle or a means. If you refuse it what sustains and 
strengthens it, or if you demand too much from it by ex- 
citing it beyond measure, you exhaust it, and by abusing 
it, deprive yourself of it. It is worse still if you pamper 
it, if you grant every thing to its unbridled desires, if you 
make yourself its slave. It is being unfaithful to the soul 
to enfeeble its servant; it is being much more unfaithful 
to it still, to enslave it to its servant. 

But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is 
necessary to perfect it; it is necessary to labour to return 
the soul to Grod better than we received it ; and it can be- 
come so only by a constant and courageous exercise. 
Every where in nature, all things are spontaneously de- 
veloped, without willing it, and without knowing it. With 
man, if the will slumbers, the other faculties degenerate into 
languor and inertion ; or, carried away by the blind impulse 
of passion, they are precipitated and go astray. It is by the 
government and education of himself that man is great. 

Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with 
his intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone 

1 See the Republic, book iv., vol. ix. of our translation. 

Q 



354 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

can give us a clear sight of the true and the good, that 
guides liberty by showing it the legitimate object of its 
efforts. No one can give himself another mind than the one 
that he has received, but he may train and strengthen it 
as well as the body, by putting it to a task of some kind, 
by rousing it when it is drowsy, by restraining it when it 
is carried away, by continually proposing to it new ob- 
jects, — for it is only by continually enriching it that it 
does not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the 
mind ; regular work excites and strengthens it, and work 
is always in our power. 

There is an education of liberty as well as our other 
faculties. It is sometimes in subduing the body, some- 
times in governing our intelligence, especially in resisting 
our passions, that we learn to be free. We encounter op- 
position at each step, — the only question is not to shun it. 
In this constant struggle liberty is formed and augmented, 
until it becomes a habit. 

Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortu- 
nate are those who have received from nature the sacred 
lire of enthusiasm ! They ought religiously to preserve it. 
But there is no soul that does not conceal some fortunate 
vein of it. It is necessary to watch it and pursue it, to 
avoid what restrains it, to seek what favours it, and, by an 
assiduous culture, draw from it, little by little, some trea- 
sures. If we cannot give ourselves sensibility, we can at 
least develop what we have. We can do this by giving 
ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of giving 
ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself; 
for, the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the 
more we love it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from 
intelligence what it returns with usury. Intelligence in 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 355 

its turn finds, in the heart, a rampart against sophism. 
Noble sentiments, nourished and developed, preserve from 
those sad systems that please certain spirits so much only 
because their hearts are so small. 

Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in 
relation with other men. 1 As long 1 as he preserves any 
intelligence and any liberty, the idea of the good dwells 
in him, and with it duty. Were we cast upon a desert 
island, duty would follow us thither. It would be beyond 
belief strange that it should be in the power of certain 
external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and 
free being from all obligation towards his liberty and his 
intelligence. In the deepest solitude he is always and 
consciously under the empire of a law attached to the 
person itself, which, by obligating him to keep continual 
watch over himself, makes at once his torment and his 
grandeur. 

If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it 
is in me, it is because it is the moral person ; it is in it- 
self respectable ; it will be so, then, wherever we meet it. 

It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In 
relation to me it imposes on me a duty; in you it becomes 
the foundation of a right, and thereby imposes on me a 
new duty in relation to you. 

1 On our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much 
accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties to- 
wards others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and 
Saint- Lambert, lecture vi. p. 235 : '* To define virtue a habitual disposition 
to contribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a 
single one of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential charac- 
ter. Therein is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Those ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat 
mystical ethics of the preceding age which, rightly occupied with perfecting 
the internal man, often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to 



o5fi LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself; for truth is 
the law of your reason as of mine. Without doubt there 
ought to be measure in the communication of truth, — all 
arc not capable of it at the same moment and in the same 
degree ; it is necessary to portion it out to them in order 
that they may be able to receive it; but, in fine, the 
truth is the proper good of the intelligence ; and it is 
for me a strict duty to respect the development of 
your mind, not to arrest, and even to favour its progress 
towards truth. iijtf 

I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even 
always the right to hinder you from committing a fault. 
Liberty is so sacred that, even when it goes astray, it still 
deserves, up to a certain point, to be managed. We are 
often wrong in wishing to prevent too much the evil that 
God himself permits. Souls may be corrupted by an 
attempt to purify them. Q & ^dj'ioa ovjsxI I Jioaisq iuox 

I ought to respect you in your affections, which make 
part of yourself; and of all the affections there are none 

critefloo nov9 bnu ^onolob. lo 

others, but is contrary to well- ordered human life. Through fear of asceti- 
cism, the philosophy of the eighteenth century forgot the care of internal 
perfection, and only considered the virtues useful to society. That was rfoaoH 
trenching many virtues, and the best ones. I take, for example, dominion 
over self. How make a virtue of it, when virtue is defined a disposition to 
rovirihvtr fo the Idj/j/rnetiS of others ? Will it be said that dominion oj^floq 
self is useful to others ? But that is not always true ; often this dominiei^^g 
is exercised in the solitude of the soul over internal and wholly personal 
movements ; and there it is most painful and most sublime. Were we in 
a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist our passions, to command 
ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a rational and free being. 
Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither the whole of virtvMtemuo 
nor its most difficult employment. What auxiliaries we have wheu the 
question is to do good to our fellow-creatures,- -pity, sympathy, natiu'ai 
benevolence ! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the depths of ihotftvib 
soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its excesses, to 
.mffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous man. I add 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. -357 

more holy than those of the family. There is in us a need 
of expanding ourselves beyond ourselves, yet without 
dispelling ourselves, of establishing ourselves in some 
souls by a regular and consecrated affection, — to this need 
the family responds. The love of men is something of the 
general good. The family is still almost the individual, 
and not merely the indivdual, — it only requires us to love 
as much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It attaches 
one to the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all ties — 
father, mother, child ; it gives to this sure succour in the 
love of its parents — to these hope, joy, new life, in their 
child. To violate the conjugal or paternal right, is to vio- 
late the person in what is perhaps its most sacred posses- 
sion. 

I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs 
to you, inasmuch as it is the necessary instrument of 
your person. I have neither the right to kill you, nor to 
wound you, unless I am attacked and threatened; then 
my violated liberty is armed with a new right, the right 
of defence, and even constraint. 

that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in those per- 
sonal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are good- 
ness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self, without the 
form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty ? They are, 
perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circum- 
stances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will 
disappear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to 
be a rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain 
faithful to liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, 
and pursue, without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all cir- 
cumstances, you may rely upon that man ; he will know how, in case of 
need, to be useful to others, because there is no true perfection for him 
without justice and charity. From the care of internal perfection you may 
draw all the useful virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One 
may be beneficent without being virtuous : one is not virtuous without 
being beneficent." 



358 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

I owe respect to your goods, for they are the product of 
your labour ; I owe respect to your labour, which is your 
liberty itself in exercise ; and, if your goods come from an 
inheritance, I still owe respect to the free will that has 
transmitted them to you. 1 

Respect for the rights of others is called justice : every 
violation of a right is an injustice. 

Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person, — 
to retrench the least of our rights, is to diminish our 
moral person, is, at least, so far as that retrenchment 
goes, to abase us to the condition of a thing. 

The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all 
others, is slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the 
faculties of one man to the profit of another man. The 
slave develops his intelligence a little only in the interest 
of another,- — it is not for the purpose of enlightening him, 
but to render him more useful, that some exercise of 
mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty of 
his movements; he is attached to the soil, is sold with it, 
or he is chained to the person of a master. The slave 
should have no affection, he has no family, no wife, no 
children, — he has a female and little ones. His activity 
does not belong to him, for the product of his labour is 
another's. But, that nothing may be wanting to slavery, 
it is necessary to go farther, — in the slave must be de- 
stroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must be 
extinguished all idea of right; for, as long as this idea 
subsists, slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may 
respond the terrible right of insurrection, that last resort of 
the oppressed against the abuse of force. 2 

1 On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture. 

2 Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 359 

Justice, respect for the person in every thing that con- 
stitutes the person, is the first duty of man towards his 
fellow-man. Is this duty the only one? 

When we have respected the person of others, when we 
have neither restrained their liberty, nor smothered their 
intelligence, nor maltreated their body, nor outraged their 
family, nor injured their goods, are we able to say that 
we have fulfilled the whole law in regard to them ! One 
who is unfortunate is suffering before us. Is our consci- 
ence satisfied, if we are able to bear witness to ourselves 
that we have not contributed to his sufferings? No; some- 
thing tells us that it is still good to give him bread, suc- 
cour, consolation. 

There is here an important distinction to be made. If 
you have remained hard and insensible at the sight of an- 
other's misery, conscience cries out against you ; and yet 
this man who is suffering, who, perhaps, is ready to die, 
has not the least right over the least part of your fortune, 
were it immense; and, if he used violence for the purpose 
of wresting from you a single penny, he would commit a 

See 1st Series, vol. in., lecture 4, p. 240: " Had another the desire to 
serve us as a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a 
thing for our use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the de- 
eire to make use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same 
way, this reciprocity of desires would authorize for neither of us this abso- 
lute sacrifice, be can Be desire can never be the tittle of a right, because there 
is something in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, 
to wit, duty and right, — justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of 
our desires, and not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire 
humanity forget its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, 
should it extend the hand to slavery, tyranny would be none the more legi- 
timate ; eternal justice would protest against a contract, which, were it 
supported by desires, reciprocal desires most authentically expressed and 
converted into solemn laws, is none the less void of all right, because, as 
Bossuet very truly said, there is no right against right, no contracts, no 
conventions, no human laws against the law of laws, against natural law." 



'260 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

crime. We here meet a new order of duties that do not 
correspond to rights. Man may resort to force in order 
to make his rights respected j he cannot impose on an- 
other any sacrifice whatever* Justice respects or restores ; 
charity gives, and gives freely. //oil woni oi x 

Charity takes from us something in order to give it to 
our fellow-men. If it goes so far as to inspire us to re- 
nounce our dearest interests, it is called devotedness. 

It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not 
obligatory. But this obligation must not be regarded as 
precise, as inflexible as the obligation to be just. Charity 
is a sacrifice ; and who can find the rule of sacrifice, the 
formula of self-renunciation? For justice, the formula is 
clear, — to respect the rights of another. But charity 
knows neither rule nor limit. It transcends all obligation. 
Its beauty is precisely in its liberty. 

But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its 
dangers. It tends to substitute its own action for the 
action of him whom it wishes to help ; it somewhat effaces 
his personality, and makes itself in some sort his provi- 
dence, — a formidable part for a mortal ! In order to be 
useful to others, one imposes himself on them, and runs 
the risk of violating their natural rights. Love, in giving 
itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is not interdicted us to act 
upon another. We can always do it through petition and 
exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we 
see one of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless 
action. We have even the right to employ force when 
passion carries away liberty and makes the person dis- 
appear. So we may, we even ought to prevent by force 
the suicide of one of our fellow-men. The legitimate 
power of charity is measured by the more or less liberty 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 361 

and reason possessed by him to whom it is applied. 
What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this 
perilous virtue ! How can we estimate with sufficient cer- 
tainty the degree of liberty still possessed by one of our 
fellow-men to know how far we may substitute ourselves for 
him in the guiding of his destiny ? And when, in order to 
assist a feeble soul, we take possession of it, who is suffi- 
ciently sure of himself not to go farther, not to pass from 
the person governed to the love of domination itself? 
Charity is often the commencement and the excuse, and 
always the pretext of usurpation. In order to have the 
right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of charity, 
it is necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long 
exercise of justice. 

To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to 
be at once just and charitable, — such are social ethics in 
the two elements that constitute them. 

We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know 
what society is. Let us look around us : — everywhere 
society exists, and where it is not, man is not man. So- 
ciety is a universal fact which must have universal foun- 
dations. 

Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of so- 
ciety. 1 The philosopby of last century delighted in such 
■ 

1 On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 
1st Series, vol. iii., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261: " Hobbes is not the only 
one who took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point 
of political science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, 
Montescmieu excepted, proceed in the same manner. Rousseau imagines 
at first a primitive Htate in which man being no longer savage without being 
yet civilized, lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. 
This golden age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of 
the iudividual, who enters naked and disarmed into what wo call the social 
state. But order cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural 




362 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

questions too much. How can we demand light from the 
regions of darkness, and the explanation of reality from a 
hypothesis? Why go back to a pretended primitive state 
in order to account for a present state which may be 
studied in itself in its unquestionable characters? Why 
seek what may have been in the germ that which may be 
perceived, that which it is the question to understand, 
completed and perfect ? Moreover, there is great peril in 
starting with the question of the origin of society. Has 
such or such an origin been found? Actual society is 
arranged according to the type of the primitive society 
that has been dreamed of, and political society is delivered 
up to the mercy of historical romances. This one ima- 
gines that the primitive state is violence, and he sets out 
from that in order to authorize the right of the right of 
the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That one 
thinks that he has found in the family the first form of 
society, and he compares government to the father of a 
family, and subjects to children; society in his eyes is a 
minor that must be held in tutelage in the hands of the 
paternal power, which in the origin is absolute, and con- 
laws perished in the shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be 
created. Society is formed by aid of a contract whose principle is the 
abandonment by each and all of their individual force and rights to the 
profit of the community, of the state, the instrument of all forces, the de 
pository of all rights. The state, for Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, 
a king ; for Rosseau, the state is the collection itself of citizens, who by 
turns are considered as subjects and governors, so that instead of the des- 
potism of one over all, we have the despotism of all over each. Law is 
not the more or less happy, more or less faithful expression of natural jus- 
tice; it is the expression of the general will. This general will is alone 
free; particular wills are not free. The general will has all rights, and 
particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, or rather 
lends them. Force, in The Citizen, is the foundation of society, of order, 
of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In the Contrat 



w 

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 3 63 



sequently, must remain so. Or has one thrown himself to 
the extreme of the opposite opinion, and into the hypo- 
thesis of an agreement, of a contract that expresses the 
will of all or of the greatest number ? He delivers up to 
the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice 
and the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are 
powerful religious institutions found in the cradle of 
society? It is hence concluded, that power belongs of 
right to priesthoods, which have the secret of the designs 
of God, and represent his sovereign authority. Thus a 
vicious method in philosophy leads to a deplorable politi- 
cal system, — the commencement is made in hypothesis, 
and the termination is in anarchy or tyranny. 

True politics do not depend on more or less well directed 
historical researches into the profound night of a past for 
ever vanished, and of which no vestige subsists: they 
rest on the knowledge of human nature. 

Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its 
foundations : — Lst, The need that we have of our fellow- 
creatures, and the social instincts that man bears in him- 
self; 2nd, The permanent and indistructible idea and sen- 
timent of justice and right. 

8ocial, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. 
Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, 
the general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, 
tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. 
Jf Hobbes, if Bosseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in it- 
self, with the certain characters without wliich we are not able to conceive it, 
they would have infallibly recognised that if there are rights derived from posi- 
tive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are rights 
derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and rules: 
from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conventions 
in order that these conventions may be reputed just; — rights that society 
consecrates and develops, but does not make, — rights not subject to the 
caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human nature, 
and like it, inviolable and sacred." 



'36-1 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly 
feels the need that he has of the succour of his fellow-crea- 
tures in order to develop his faculties, to embellish his life, 
and even to preserve it. 1 Without reflection, without con- 
vention, lie claims the hand, the experience, the love of those 
whom he sees made like himself. The instinct of society- 
is in the first cry of the child that calls for the mother's 
help without knowing that it has a mother, and in the 
eagerness of the mother to respond to the cries of the 
child. It is in the feelings for others that nature has put 
in us — pity, sympathy, benevolence. It is in the attraction 
of the sexes, in their union, in the love of parents for 
their children, and in the ties of every kind that these 
first ties engender. If Providence has attached so much 
sadness to solitude, so much charm to society, it is be- 
cause society is indispensable for the preservation of man 
and for his happiness, for his intellect and moral develop- 
ment. 

But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that 
completes it. 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265 : if What! " somewhere pays Montesquieu, 
" man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for 
society ! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the 
life of humanity, except a law of humanity % The universal and permanent 
fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle shines 
forth in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true 
that we love society for the advantages that it brings ; but it is none the 
less true, that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently 
of all calculation. Solitude saddens us ; it is not less deadly to the life of 
the moral being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. 
Without society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most 
powerful principles of our soul, which establishes between men a commu- 
nity of sentiments, by which each lives in all and all live in each ? Who 
would be blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature 
for society? And the attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of 
parents for children, — do they not found a sort of natural society, that is 
increased and developed by the power of the same causes which produced 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS- 365 

% 

Iii the presence of another man, without any external 
law, without any compact, x it is sufficient that I know that 
he is a man, that is to say, that he is intelligent and free, 
in order to know that he has rights, and to know that I 
ought to respect his rights as he ought to respect mine. 
As he is no freer than I am, nor I than he, we recognise 
towards each other equal rights and equal duties. If he 
abuses his force to violate the equality of our rights, I 
know that I have the right to defend myself and make 
myself respected ; and if a third party is found between 
us, without any personal interest in the quarreV he 
knows that it is his right and his duty to use force in 
order to protect the feeble, and even to make the oppres- 
sor expiate his injustice by a chastisement. Therein is 
already seen entire society with its essential principles, — 
justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment. 

Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does 
not consist in doing what we will, but in doing what we 
have a right to do. Liberty of passion and caprice would 

jrada 

it ? Divided by interest, united by sentiment, men respect each other in 
the name of justice. Let us add that they love each other in virtue of 
natural charity. In the sight of justice, equal in right, charity inspires us 
to consider ourselves as brethren, and to give each other succour and con- 
solation. Wonderful thing ! God has not left to our wisdom, nor even 
to experience, the care of forming and preserving society, — he has willed 
that sociability should be a law of our nature, and a law so imperative that 
no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no distaste even, can prevail against it. 
All the power of the spirit of system was necessary in order to make 
Hobbes say that society is an accident, as an incredible degree of melan- 
choly to wring from Rousseau the extravagant expression that society is an 
evil." 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 283 : " We do not hold from a compact our 
quality as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it ; or, rather, there 
is an immortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt 
by every uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all 
beings intelligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a 



366 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

have for its consequence the enslavement of the weakest 
to the strongest, and the enslavement of the strongest 
themselves to their unbridled desires. Man is truly free 
in the interior of his consciousness only in resisting 
passion and obeying justice ; therein also is the type of 
true social liberty. Nothing is falser than the opinion 
that society diminishes our mutual liberty; far from that, 
it secures it, develops it: what it suppresses is not liberty; 
it is its opposite, passion. Society no more injures liberty 
than justice, for society is nothing else than the very idea 
of justice realized. 

In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If 
men are unequal in physical force and intelligence, they 
are equal in so far as they are free beings, and conse- 
quently equally worthy of respect. All men, when they 
bear the sacred character of the moral person, are to be 
respected, by the same title, and in the same degree. 1 

The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of 
right is in duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided 
it injure not the liberty of another. I ought to let you 

common respect and a common charity . . . Laws promulgate duties, 
but do not give birth to them ; they could not violate duties without being 
unjust, and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws — that is to say, 
decisions of the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the 
conscience of all. Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than 
that of declaring what exists before them, we often found on them 
right and justice, to the great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment 
of right. Time and habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to 
transfer it to law. What then happens ? We either obey it, even when 
it is unjust, which is not a very great evil, but we do not think of reform- 
ing it little by little, having no superior principle that enables us to judge 
it, — or we continually change it,' in an invincible impotence of founding 
anything, by not knowing the immutable basis on which written law must 
rest. In either case, all progress is impossible, because the laws are not 
related to their true principle, which is reason, conscience, sovereign and 
absolute justice." a Lecture 12. 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 367 

do what you please, but on the condition that nothing 
which you do will injure my liberty. For then, in virtue 
of my right of liberty, I should regard myself as obligated 
to repress the aberrations of your will, in order to protect 
my own and that of others. Society guarantees the 
liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks that of 
another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For ex- 
ample, religious liberty is sacred ; you may, in the secret 
of consciousness, invent for yourself the most extravagant 
superstition ; but if you wish publicly to inculcate an im- 
moral worship, you threaten the liberty and reason of your 
citizens: such preaching is interdicted. 

From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity 
of a constituted repressive force. 

Rigorously, this force is in us; for if I am unjustly 
attacked, I have the right to defend myself. But, in the 
first place, I may not be the strongest ; in the second place, 
no one is an impartial judge in his own cause, and what I 
regard or give out as an act of legitimate defence may be 
an act of violence and oppression. 

So the protection of the rights of each one demands an 
impartial and disinterested force, that may be superior to 
all particular forces. 

This disinterested party, armed with the power neces- 
sary to secure and defend the liberty of all, is called 
government. 

The right of government expresses the rights of all and 
each. It is the right of personal defence transferred, to a 
public force, to the profit of common liberty. 

Government is not, then, a power distinct from and in- 
dependent of society ; it draws from society its whole 
force. It is not what it has seemed to two opposite 



368 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

schools of publicists, — to those who sacrifice society to 
government, — to those who consider government as the 
enemy of society. If government did not represent 
society, it would be only a material, illegitimate, and 
soon powerless force ; and without government, society 
would be a war of all against all. Society makes the 
moral power of government, as government makes the 
security of society. Pascal is wrong l when he says, that 
not being able to make what is just powerful, men have 
made what is powerful just. Government, in principle at 
least, is precisely what Pascal desired,— justice, armed 
with force. 

It is a sad and false political system that places society 
and government, authority and liberty, in opposition to 
each other, by making them come from two different 
sources, by presenting them as two contrary principles. 
I often hear the principle of authority spoken of as a prin- 
ciple apart, independent, deriving" from itself its force 
and legitimacy, and consequently made to rule. No error 
is deeper and more dangerous. Thereby it is thought to 
confirm the principle of authority; far from that, from it 
is taken away its solidest foundation. Authority — that is 
to say legitimate and moral authority — is nothing else 
than justice, and justice is nothing else than the respect of 
liberty ; so that there is not therein two different and 
contrary opinions, but one and the same principle, of 
equal certainty and equal grandeur, under all its forms 
and in all its applications, ici oi hoo'g ob oJ lobio ni oo'iol 

Authority, it is said, comes from God : doubtless ; but 
whence comes liberty, whence comes humanity ? To God 
must be referred every thing tliat is excellent on the 

1 See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40. 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 369 

earth ; and nothing is more excellent than liberty. Rea- 
son, which in man commands liberty, commands it accord- 
ing to its nature; and the first law that reason imposes on 
liberty is that of self-respect. 

Authority is so much the stronger as its true title is 
better understood ; and obedience is the easiest when, in- 
stead of degrading, it honours; when, instead of resembling 
servitude, it is at once the condition and guaranty of 
liberty. 

The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, 
the protector of the common liberty, reign. Whence it 
follows, that as long as the liberty of one citizen does not 
injure the liberty of another, it escapes all repression. So 
government cannot be severe against falsehood, intemper- 
ance, imprudence, levity, avarice, egoism, except when 
these vices become prejudicial to others. Moreover, it is 
not necessary to confine government within too narrow 
limits. Government, which represents society, is also a 
moral person; it has a heart like the individual; it has 
generosity, goodness, charity. There are legitimate, and 
even universally admired facts, that are not explained, 
if the function of government is reduced to the protection 
of rights alone. 1 Government owes to the citizens, in a 
certain measure, to guard their well-being, to develop their 
intelligence, to fortify their morality, for the interest of 
society, and even for the interest of humanity. Hence 
sometimes for government the formidable right of using 
force in order to do good to men. But wc arc here touch- 



1 See our pamphlet entitled Justice and Charity, composed in 1848, in 
the midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of 
liberty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, 
private and civil. 



•370 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

ing upon that delicate point where charity inclines to 
despotism. Too much intelligence and wisdom, therefore, 
cannot be demanded in the employment of a power per- 
haps necessary, but dangerous. 

Now, on what condition is government exercised ? Is 
an act of its own will sufficient for it in order to employ 
to its own liking under all circumstances, as it shall under- 
stand them, the power that has been confided to it ? Go- 
vernment must have been thus exercised in early society, 
and in the infancy of the art of governing. But the 
power, exercised by men, may go astray in different ways, 
either through weakness or through excess of force. It 
must, then, have a rule superior to itself, a public and 
known rule, that may be a lesson for the citizens, and for 
the government a rein and support ; that rule is called 
law. 

Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which 
cannot be written, but speaks to the reason and heart of 
all. Written laws are the formulas wherein it is sought 
to express, with the least possible imperfection, what 
natural justice requires in such or such determined cir- 
cumstances. 

If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, 
which is universal and absolute justice, one of the neces- 
sary conditions of a good law is the universality of its 
character. It is necessary to examine in an abstract and 
general manner what is required by justice in such or 
such a case, to the end that this case being presented 
may be judged according to the rule laid down, without 
regard to circumstances, place, time, or person. 

The collection of those rules or laws that govern the 
social relations of individuals is called positive right. 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 37l 

Positive rig-lit rests wholly on natural right, which at once 
serves as its foundation, measure, and limit. The supreme 
law of every positive law is that it be not opposed to 
natural law : no law can impose on us a false duty, nor 
deprive us of a true right. 

The sanction of law is punishment. We have already 
seen that the right to punish springs from the idea of 
demerit. 1 In the universal order, to God alone it belongs 
to apply a punishment to all faults, whatever they may 
be. In the social order, government is invested with the 
right to punish only for the purpose of protecting liberty 
by imposing a just reparation on those who violate it. 
Every fault that is not contrary to justice, and does not 
strike at liberty, escapes, then, social retribution. Neither 
is the right to punish the right of avenging one's self. 
To render evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a 
tooth for a tooth, is the barbarous form of a justice with- 
out light ; for the evil that I do you will not take away 

1 See on the theory of penalty, the Gorgias, vol. iii. of the translation of 
Plato, and our argument, p. 367: " The first law of order is to be faithful 
to virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, 
justice ; but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate 
one's fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking 
the foundation of penalty. Some, who think themselves great politicians, 
find it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are 
turned aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventative virtue. 
And that it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its founda- 
tion; for punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, 
and still more terror, and would be quite as preventative. Others, in their 
pretensions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment 
except in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue, — and 
that, too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its founda- 
tion; for that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. 
It is, then, always necessary to recur to justice. Justice is the true foun- 
dation of punishment, — personal and social utility are only consequences. 
It is an incontestable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and can- 
not but think that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a. 



372 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

the evil that you have done me. It is not the pain felt 
by the victim that demands a corresponding pain; it is 
violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the ex- 
piation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. 
The principle of penalty is not the reparation of damage 
caused. If I have caused you damage without intending 
it, I pay you an indemnity ; that is not a penalty, for I 
am not culpable ; whilst if I have committed a crime, in 
spite of the material indemnity for the evil that I have 
done, I owe a reparation to justice by a proper suffering, 
and in that truly consists the penalty. 

"What is the exact proportion of chastisements and 
crimes ? This question cannot receive an absolute solu- 
tion. What is here immutable, is that the act opposed to 
justice merits a punishment, and that the more unjust the 
act is, the severer ought to be the punishment. But by the 
side of the right to punish is the duty of correcting. To 
the culprit must be left the possibility of repairing his 
crime. The culpable man is still a man; he is not a thing 

punishment. In intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of 
penalty; and when injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited 
punishment ought to be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only 
because it ought. Right here has no other source than duty, the strictest, 
most evident, and most sacred duty, without which this pretended right 
would be only that of force, that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it 
even result in the moral profit of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary 
spectacle for the people, — what it would not then be ; for then the punish- 
ment would find no sympathy, no echo, either in the public conscience or 
in that of the condemned. The punishment is not just, because it is 
preventively or correctatively useful; but it is in both ways useful, because 
it is just. This theory of penalty, in demostrating the falsity, the incom- 
plete and exclu^ve character of two theories that divide publicists, com- 
pletes and explains them, and gives them both a legitimate centre and base. 
It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, but is met in several passages, 
briefly but positi^ly expressed, and on it rests the sublime theory of expi- 
ation. 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 373 

of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it becomes 
injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into 
a gulf that it may wound no more, Man is a rational being, 
capable of comprehending good and'evil, of repenting, and^ 
of being one day reconciled witlr order. These truths 
have given birth to works that honour the close of the 
eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. 
The conception of houses of correction reminds one of 
those early times of Christianity when punishment con- 
sisted in an expiation that permitted the culprit to return 
through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here inter- 
venes, as we have just indicated, the principle of charity, 
which is very different from the principle of justice. To 
punish is just, to ameliorate is charitable. In what mea- 
sure ought those two principles to be united? Nothing is 
more delicate, more difficult to determine. It is certain 
that justice ought to govern. In undertaking the amend- 
ment of the culprit, government usurps, with a very gene-? 1 1 
rous usurpation, the rights of religion; but it ought not 
to go so far as to forget its proper function and its rigorous 

CUlty. ilmoq 

Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so 
called. Nothing in them but these principles is fixed and 
invariable ; all else is relative. The constitutions of states 
have something absolute by their relation to the inviola- 
ble rights which they ought to guarantee; but they also 
have a relative side by the variable forms with which they 
are clothed, according to times, places, manners, history. 
The supreme rule of which philosophy reminds politics, is 
that politics ought, in consulting all circumstances, to seek 
always those social forms and institutions that best realize 
those eternal principles. Yes, they are eternal; because 



374 LECTURE FIFTEENTH 

they arc drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because 
they rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all- 
powerful instincts of the heart, on the indestructible no- 
tion of justice, and the sublime idea of charity, on the con- 
sciousness of person, liberty, and equality, on duty and 
right, on merit and demerit. Such are the foundations of 
all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of human 
society, that is to say, formed of free and rational beings; 
and such are the maxims that ought to direct every govern- 
ment worthy of its mission, which knows that it is not 
dealing with beasts but with men, which respects them 
and loves them. 

Thank God, French society has always marched by the 
light of this immortal ideal, and the dynasty that has been 
at its head for some centuries has always guided it in these 
generous ways. It was Louis le Grros who, in the Middle 
Age, emancipated the communes; it was Philippe le Bel 
who instituted parliaments — an independent and gratuitous 
justice ; it was Henri IV. who began religious liberty ; 
it was Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. who, while they under- 
took to give to France her natural frontiers, and almost 
succeeded in it, laboured to unite more and more all parts 
of the nation, to put a regular administration in the place 
of feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great vassals to a 
simple aristocracy, from day to day deprived of every pri- 
vilege but that of serving the common country in the first 
rank. It was a king of France who, comprehending the 
new wants, and associating himself with the progress of 
the times, attempted to substitute for that very real, but 
confused and formless representative government, that was 
called the assemblies of the nobility, the clergy, and the tiers 
etat, the true representative government that is proper for 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 37^ 

great civilized nations, — a glorious and unfortunate at- 
tempt that, if royalty had then been served by a Richelieu, 
a Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a neces- 
sary reform, that, through the fault of every one, ended in 
a revolution full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed 
and covered by an incomparable courage, a sincere patriot- 
ism, and the most brilliant triumphs. Finally, it was the 
brother of Louis XVI. who, enlightened and not discour- 
aged by the misfortunes of his family, spontaneously gave 
to France that liberal and wise constitution of which our 
fathers had dreamed, about which Montesquieu had written, 
which, loyally adhered to, and necessarily developed, is 
admirably fitted for the present time, and sufficient for a 
long future. "We are fortunate in finding in the Charter 
the principles that we have just explained, that contain our 
views and our hopes for France and humanity. 1 

1 As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general 
principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st 
Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil 
and political guaranties which they demand ; we even, touched the question 
of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty 
of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2nd Series, vol. i., lecture 13, 
we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under 
the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty 
was easy. We continued it in 1848 ; and wdien, at the unexpected inun- 
dation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate reaction in favour of an 
absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether 
the young American republic was not called to serve a3 a model for old 
Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in 
the interest of liberty ; we believe that we demonstrated that the de- 
velopment of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the 
lower classes, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the constitu- 
tional monarchy, — 6th Series, Political Discourses, with cm introduction 
on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government. 






LECTURE XVI. 

GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 

Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of moral 
truth, of the good, and of the moral person. — Liberty of God. — The 
divine justice and charity. — God, the sanction of the moral law. Im 
mortality of the soul ; argument from merit and demerit ; argument 
from the simplicity of the soul ; argument from final causes. — Religious 
sentiment. — Adoration. — Worship. — Moral beauty of Christianity. 

The moral order has been confirmed, — we are in pos- 
session of moral truth, of the idea of the good, and the 
obligation that is attached to it. Now, the same principle 
that has not permitted us to stop at absolute truth, 1 and 
has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a real and 
substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of 
the good to the being who is its first and last foundation. 

Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary 
truth, cannot remain in a state of abstraction. In us it 
is only conceived. There must somewhere be a being who 
not only conceives it, but constituted it. 

As all beautiful things and all true things are related — 
these to a unity that is absolute truth, and those to an- 
other unity that is absolute beauty, so all moral principles 
participate in the same principle which is the good. We 
thus elevate ourselves to the conception of the good in 

1 Lectures 4 and 7. 



itself, of absolute good, superior to all particular duties, 
and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute 
good be anything else than an attribute of him who, pro- 
perly speaking, is alone absolute being ? 

"Would it be possible that there might be several absolute 
beings, and that the being in whom are realized absolute 
truth and absolute beauty might not also be the one who 
is the principle of absolute good ? The very idea of the 
absolute implies absolute unity. The true, the beautiful, 
and the good, are not three distinct essences; they are 
one and the same essence considered in its fundamental 
attributes. Our mind distinguishes them, because it can 
comprehend them only by division ; but, in the being in 
whom they reside, they are indivisibly united ; and this 
being, at once triple and one, who sums up in himself per- 
fect beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is no- 
thing else than God. 

So God is necessarily the principle of moral truth and 
the good. He is also the type of the moral person that 
we carry in us. 

Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed 
witli reason and liberty. He is capable of virtue, and vir- 
tue has in him two principal forms, respect of others, and 
love of others, justice and charity. 

Can there be among the attributes possessed by the 
creature something essential not possessed by the Creator? 
Whence does the effect draw its reality and its being, ex- 
cept from its cause? What it possesses, it borrows and 
receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential 
in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is 
inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone 
that it is dependent and derived, it bears in itself the 

B 



'378 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

signs and the conditions of dependence. If, then, we cannot 
legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the effect 
in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the 
excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, 
otherwise there would be something prominent in the 
effect which would be without cause. 

Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new 
nor subtle; but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged 
and elucidated, and it is, to our eyes, firm against every 
test. It is by the aid of this principle that we can, up to 
a certain point, penetrate into the true nature of God. 

God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be ex- 
plained by way of deduction, and by means of algebraic 
equations. When, setting out from a first attribute, we 
have deduced the attributes of God from each other, after 
the manner of geometricians and the school-men, what do 
we possess, 1 I pray you, but abstractions ? It is necessary 
to leave these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real 
and living God. 

The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion 
of an infinite being, is itself given to us independently of 
all experience. It is the consciousness of ourselves, as 
being at once, and as being limited, that elevates us 
directly to the conception of a being who is the principle 
of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid 
and simple argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes, 2 
opens to us a way that must be followed, in which Des- 

1 Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without excepting 
the beat, — that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the mo.st popular of all, the 
Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. See our small work entitled Philo- 
tophie Populaire, 3d edition, p. 82. 

2 On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see alno 
1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture 6. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. o<V 

cartes too quickly stopped. If the being that we possess 
forces us to recur to a cause which possesses being in an 
infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say, 
of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. 
Then, God will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, 
or at least indeterminate being in which reason and the 
heart know not where to betake themselves, 1 he will be a 
real and determined being, a moral person like ours; and 
psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a theodicea 
at once sublime and related to us. 2 

Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free? 
No one contends that he who is cause of all causes, who 
has no cause but himself, can be dependent on anything 
whatever. But in freeing God from all external constraint, 
Spinosa subjects him to an internal and mathematical 
necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes, 
of being which is not a person ; but the essential character 
of personal being is precisely liberty. If, then, God were 
not free, God would be beneath man. Would it not be 



1 Fragments de Philosophic Cartesienne, p. 24: "The infinite being, in as 
much as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither is he, in as much as in- 
finite, an intelligence; neither is he a will; neither is he a principle of justice, 
nor much less a principle of love. We have no right to impute to hini all 
these attributes in virtue of the single argument that every contingent 
being supposes a being that is not so, that every finite supposes an in- 
finite. The God given by this argument is the God of tSpinosa, is 
rigorously so; but he is almost as though he were not, at least for us 
who with difficulty perceive him in the inaccessible heights of an eter- 
nity and existence that are absolute, void of thought, of liberty, of 
love, similar to nonentity itself, and a thousand times inferior, in hi* infi- 
nity and eternity, to an hour of our finite and perishable existence, if 
during this fleeting hour we know what we are, if we think, if we love 
something else than ourselves, if we feel capable of freely sacrificing to a 
idea the few minutes that have been accorded to us." 

3 This theodicea is here in reswrne, and in the 4th and 5th lectures of 
part first, as well as in the lecture that follows. The most important of 



•380 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

strange that the creature should have the marvellous power 
of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and that the 
being who has made him should be subjected to a neces- 
sary development, whose cause is only in himself, without 
doubt, but, in fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical 
or metaphysical, but very inferior to the personal and 
voluntary cause that we are, and of which we have the 
clearest consciousness ? God is therefore free, since we 
are free. But he is not free as we are free; for God is at 
once all that we are, and nothing that we are. He pos- 
sesses the same attributes that we possess, but elevated to 
infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty, joined to an in- 
finite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is infallible, 
except from the uncertainties of deliberation, and perceiv- 
ing at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontan- 
eously, and without effort, fulfils it. 1 

In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty 
that is the foundation of our being, we also transfer to 
him justice and charity. In man, justice and charity are 
virtues; in God, they are attributes. What is in us the 

our different writings, on this point, will be found collected and elucidated 
by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th lecture of the first volume of the 
1st Series. — See our translation of this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, 
under the title of the History of Modern Philosophy. 

1 3rd Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3rd edition: " Without vain 
eubtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and spontaneous 
liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance of delibera- 
tion between different objects, and under this supreme condition, that when, 
as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do this or that, we have the 
immediate consciousness of having been able, and of being able still, to 
will the contrary. It is in volition, and in the retinue of phenomena 
which surround it, that liberty more energetically appears, but it is not 
thereby exhausted. It is at rare and sublime moments in which liberty 
is as much greater as it appears less to the eyes of a superficial observation. 
I have often cited the example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate ; 
and for all that, was d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty ? 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 38 J 

laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature. 
If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and 
the sign of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that 
the perfect being should not know and respect the rights 
of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has im- 
parted to them those rights. In God resides a sovereign 
justice, which renders to each one his due, not according 
to deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of 
things. Finally, if man, that limited being, has the 
power of going out of himself, of forgetting his person, of 
loving another than himself, of devoting himself to an- 
other's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of 
another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite 
.degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the 
supreme virtue of the human person? Yes, there is in 
God an infinite tenderness for his creatures : he at first 
manifested it in giving us the being that he might have 
withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable 
signs of his divine providence. Plato knew this love of 
God well, and expressed it in those great words, * Let 

Has tbe saint who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has 
come to practise, as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which 
are repugnant to human weakness ; has the saint, in order to have 
gone out from the contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty 
which we called volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it ; 
and is be nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as 
Luther and Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive 
interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine ? No, freedom still remains ; 
and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is elevated 
and ennobled ; from the human form of volition it has passed to the almost 
divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity La essentially free, although it may 
be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often, in the rapid 
motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own observation, and leaves 
scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness. Let us transfer this exact 
psychology to theodicsa, and we may recognise without hypothesis, that 
spontaneity is also especially the form of God's liberty. Yes, certainly, 



382 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

us say that the cause which led the supreme ordain er to 
produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; 
and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from 
envy, he willed that all things should be, as much as pos- 
sible, like himself." 1 Christianity went farther: accord- 
ing to the divine doctrine, God so loved men that he gave 
them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his charity, 
as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to 
give more to the creature; he gives him every thing that 
he can receive without ceasing to be a creature; he gives 
him every thing, even himself, so far as the creature is in 
him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing 
can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally expands 
and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in 
power, infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaust- 
less abundance upon the world, to teach us that the more 
we give the more we possess. It is egoism, whose root is 
at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of the sin- 
cerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we 

God is free; for, among other proofs, it would be absurd that there should 
be less freedom in the first cause than in one of its effects, humanity ; God 
is free, but not with that liberty which is related to our double nature, and 
made to contend against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue 
and our imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his 
own divine nature, that is, a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognising no 
obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between 
reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently, cannot 
will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could take what 
we call the bad part ? This very supposition is impious. It is necessary 
to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has acted freely 
without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of having 
been able to choose the other part. His nature, all powerful, all just, all- 
wise, is developed with that spontaneity which contains entire liberty, 
and excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of volition, and the me- 
chanical operation of necessity. Such is the principle and the true charac- 
ter of the divine action." 

1 Timceus, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. oK'A 

lose by self-devotion : it is egoism that makes us call devo- 
tion a sacrifice. 

If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will 
nothing but what is good and just; and, as he is all-power- 
ful, every thing that he wills he can do, and consequently 
does do. The world is the work of God; it is therefore 
perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end. 

And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that 
seems to accuse the justice and goodness of God. 

A principle that is attached to the very idea of the 
good, says to us that every moral agent deserves a reward 
when he does good, and a punishment when he does evil. 
This principle is universal and necessary : it is absolute. 
If this principle has not its application in this world, it 
must either be a lie, or this world is ordered ill. 

Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed 
by happiness, nor evil always by unhappiness. 

Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, 
it is rare enough, and seems to present the character of 
an exception. 

Virtue is a struggle against passion ; this struggle, full 
of dignity, is also full of pain ; but, on one side, crime is 
condemned to much harder pains; on the other, those of 
virtue are of short duration ; they are a necessary and 
almost always beneficent trial. 

Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still 
with it, as the greatest unhappiness is with crime; and 
such is the case in small and great, in the secret of the 
soul, and on the theatre of life, in the obscurest conditions 
and in the most conspicuous situations. 

Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of 
happiness or unhappiness. In this regard, compare tern- 



384 LECTUKE SIXTEENTH. 

perance and its opposite, order and disorder, virtue and 
vice ; I mean a temperance truly temperate, and not an 
atrabilarious asceticism, a rational virtue, and not a fierce 
virtue. 

The great physician Hufeland 1 remarks that the bene- 
volent sentiments are favourable to health, and that the 
malevolent sentiments are opposed to it. Violent and 
sinful passions irritate, inflame, and carry trouble into the 
organization as well as the soul ; the benevolent affections 
preserve the measured and harmonious play of all the 
functions. 

Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities 
pertain to wise and well-regulated lives. 

Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than 
vice: it is already much, it seems to me. 

I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health ; 
but, in fine, with the body, our most constant host is con- 
science. Peace or trouble of conscience decides internal 
happiness or unhappiness. At this point of view, compare 
again order and disorder, virtue and vice. 

And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and 
contempt, consideration and infamy? Certainly opinion 
has its mistakes, but they are not long. In general, if 
charlatans, intriguers, impostors of every kind, for some 
time surreptitiously get suffrages, it must be admitted that 
a sustained honesty is the surest and the almost infallible 
means of reaching a good renown. 

I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any 
development. It would have afforded me delight, after 
having distinguished virtue from happiness, to show them 
to you almost always united by the admirable law of 

1 Be VArt de prolonger sa Vie, etc. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 3&5 

merit and demerit. I should have been pleased to show 
you this beneficent law already governing human destiny, 
and called to preside over it more exactly from day to 
day by the ever-increasing progress of lights in govern- 
ments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and judicial 
institutions. It would have been my wish to make pass 
into your minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, 
after all, justice is already in this world, and that the 
surest road to happiness is still that of virtue. 

This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato; and it is 
also that of Franklin, and I gather it from my personal 
experience and an attentive examination of human life. 
But I admit that there are exceptions; and were there but 
one exception, it would be necessary to explain it. 

Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and 
loved, who, placed between the scaffold and the betrayal 
of a sacred cause, voluntarily mounts the scaffold at twenty 
years of age. What do you make of this noble victim ? 
The law of merit and demerit seems here suspended. Do 
you dare blame virtue, or how in this world do you accord 
to it the recompense that it has not sought, but is its due? 

By careful search you will find more than one case 
analogous to that. 

The laws of this world are general; they turn aside to 
suit no one : they pursue their course without regard to 
the merit or demerit of any. If a man is born with a bad 
temperament, it is in virtue of certain obscure but unde- 
viatiug physical laws, to which he is subject like the 
animal and the plant, and he suffers during his whole 
life, although personally innocent. He is brought up in 
the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities that strike at 
hazard the good as well as the bad. 



o8(J LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is 
true, but it absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who 
is culpable. Besides, it knows only certain derelictions. 
What faults, what basenesses occur in the dark, which do 
not receive merited chastisement ! In like manner, what 
obscure devotions of which God is the sole witness and 
judge! Without doubt nothing escapes the eye of con- 
science, and the culpable soul cannot escape remorse. 
But remorse is not always in exact relation with the 
fault committed ; its vivacity may depend on a nature 
more or less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, 
if it is in general very true that the law of merit and de- 
merit is fulfilled in this world, it is not fulfilled with 
mathematical rigour. 

What must we conclude from this? That the world is ill- 
made? No. That cannot be, and is not. That cannot 
be, for incontestably the world has a just and good author; 
that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning in the 
world ; and it would be absurd to misconceive the mani- 
fest order that almost everywhere shines forth on acccount 
of a few phenomena that we cannot refer to order. The 
universe endures, therefore it is well made. The pessi- 
mism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate of 
facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two 
systematic extremes which facts deny, the human race 
places the hope of another life. It has found it very 
irrational to reject a necessary law on account of some 
infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and 
from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to 
be referred to the law, that there will be a reparation. 
Either this conclusion must be admitted, or the two great 
principles previously admitted, that God is just, and that 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 387 

the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be 
rejected. 

Now, to reject these two principles is to totally over- 
throw all human belief. 

To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual 
life must be elsewhere terminated or continued. 

But is this continuation of the person possible ? After 
the dissolution of the body, can anything of us remain ? 

In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which 
awaits the reward or punishment of its good or bad 
actions, is united to a body, — it lives with the body, 
makes use of it, and, in a certain measure, depends on it, 
but is not it. 1 The body is composed of parts, may de- 
crease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible, and 
even infinitely divisible. But that something that has 
consciousness of itself, that says, I, me, that feels itself to 
be free and responsible, does it not also feel that there is 
in it no division, even no possible division, that it is a 
being one and simple? Is the me more or less me? Is 
there a half of me, a quarter of me? I cannot divide 



1 On the spirituality of the soul, see all our writings. We will limit 
ourselves to two citations. 2nd Series, vol. Hi., lecture 25, p. 359 : " It 
is impossible to know any phenomenon of consciousness, the phenomena of 
sensation, or volition, or of intelligence, without instantly referring them 
to a subject one and identical, which is the me; so we cannot know the 
externa] phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, 
of colour, of smell, of taste, etc., without judging that these are not pheno- 
mena in appearance, but phenomena which belong to something real, 
which is solid, impenetrable, figured, coloured, odorous, savoury, etc. On 
the other hand, if you did not know any of the phenomena of consciousness, 
you would never have the least idea of the subject of these phenomena ; if 
you did not know any of the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, 
of impenetrability, of figure, of colour, etc.. you would not have any idea 
of the subject of these phenomena: therefore the characters, whether of 
the phenomena of consciousness, or of exterior phenomena, are for you thr 



388 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

my person. It remains identical to itself under the di- 
versity of the phenomena that manifest it. This iden- 
tity, this indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. 
Spirituality is, therefore, the very essence of the per- 
son. Belief in the spirituality of the soul is involved in 
the belief of this identity of the me, which no rational 
being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is 
not the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does 
not essentially differ from the body. Add that when we 
say the soul, we mean to say, and do say the person, 
which is not separated from the consciousness of the at- 
tributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being 
without consciousness is not a person. It is the person 
that is identical, one, simple. Its attributes, in develop- 
ing it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is indissoluble, 
and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in order 
to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal 
soul, it does not demand an impossible thing. The spiritu- 
ality of the soul is the necessary foundation of immor- 
tality. The law of merit and demerit is the direct demon- 
only signs of the nature of the subjects of these phenomena. In examin- 
ing the phenomena which fall under the senses, we find between them 
grave differences upon which it is useless here to insist, and which estab- 
lish the distinction of primary qualities and of secondary qualities. In the 
first rank among the primary qualities is solidity, which is given to you in 
the sensation of resistance, and inevitably accompanied by form, etc. On 
the contrary, when you examine the phenomena of consciousness, you do 
not therein find this character of resistance, of solidity, of form, etc. ; you 
do not find that the phenomena of your consciousness have a figure, solidity, 
impenetrability, resistance ; without speaking of secondary qualities which 
are equally foreign to them, colour, savour, sound, smell, etc. Now, as 
the subject is for us only the collection of the phenomena which reveal it 
to us, together with its own existence in so far as the subject of the inhe- 
rence of these phenomena, it follows that, under phenomena marked with 
dissimilar characters and entirely foreign to each other, the human mind 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 389 

stration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysi- 
cal proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most 
celebrated, most popular, at once the most convincing and 
the most persuasive. 

What powerful motives are added to these two proofs 
to fortify them in the heart ! The following, for example, 
is a presumption of great value for any one that believes 
in the virtue of sentiment and instinct. 

Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute 
as that which refers every event to a cause. 1 Man has, 
therefore, an end. This end is revealed in all his thoughts, 
in all his ways, in all his sentiments, in all his life. What- 
ever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he thinks, lie 
thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the 
infinite. 2 This need of the infinite is the main-spring of 
scientific curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love 
also stops and rests only there. On the route it may ex- 
perience lively joys; but a secret bitterness that is min- 
gled with them soon makes it feel their insufficiency and 
emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object, it 



conceives dissimilar and foreign subjects. Thus as solidity and figure have 
nothing in common with sensation, will, and thought, as every solid is ex- 
tended for us, and as we place it necessarily in space, while our thoughts, 
our volitions, our sensations, are for us unextended, and while we cannot 
conceive them and place them in space, but only in time, the human mind 
concludes with perfect strictness that the subject of the exterior phenomena 
has the character of the latter, and that the subject of the phenomena of 
consciousness has the character of the former; that the one is solid and ex- 
tended, and that the other is neither solid nor extended. Finally, as that 
which is solid and extended is divisible, and as that which is neither solid 
nor extended is indivisible, hence divisibility is attributed to the solid and 
extended subject, and indivisibility attributed to the subject which is 
neither extended nor solid. Who of us, in fact, does not believe himself 

1 See 1st part, lecture 1. 2 See lecture 5, ^f}Jiitir^)H. 



o90 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all 
its successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. 
If it knew how to read itself, it would recognise that if 
nothing here below satisfies it, it is because its object is 
more elevated, because the true bourne after which it as- 
pires is infinite perfection. Finally, like thought and love, 
human activity is without limits. Who can say where 
it shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon 
another world will be necessary for us. Man is journeying 
towards the infinite, which is always receding before him, 
which he always pursues. He conceives it, he feels it, he 
bears it, thus to speak, in himself, — how should his end 
be elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of im- 
mortality, that universal hope of another life to which all 
worships, all poesies, all traditions bear witness. We tend 
to the infinite witli all our powers ; death comes to inter- 
rupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes it un- 
finished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something 
after death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. 
Look at the flower that to-morrow will not be. To-day, 



an indivisible being, one and identical, the same yesterday, to-day, and to- 
morrow ? Well, the word body, the word matter, signifies nothing else 
than the subject of external phenomena, the most eminent of which are 
form, impenetrability, solidity, extension, divisibility. The word mind, 
the word soul, signifies nothing else than the subject of the phenomena of 
consciousness, thought, will, sensation, phenomena simple, unextended, not 
solid, etc. Behold the whole idea of spirit, and the whole idea of matter! 
See, therefore, all that must be done in order to bring back matter to 
spirit and spirit to matter : it ir-s necessary to pretend that sensation, voli- 
tion, thought, are reducible in the last analysis to solidity, extension, 
figure, divisibility, etc., or that solidity extension, figure, etc., are reduci- 
ble to thought, volition, sensation." 1st Series, vol. hi., lecture 1, Locke. 
" Locke pretends that we cannot be certain by the contemplation of our otvn 
ideas, that matter cannot think; on the contrary, it is in the contemplation 
itself of our ideas that we clearly perceive that matter and thought are in- 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OE THE IDEA. OE THE GOOD. o91 

at least, it is entirely developed : we can conceive no- 
thing more beautiful of its kind; it lias attained its per- 
fection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of 
which I have the clearest idea and the most invincible 
need, for which I feel that I am born, — in vain I call for 
it, in vain I labour for it ; it escapes me, and leaves me 
only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings 
attain their end ; should man alone not attain his? Should 
the greatest of creatures be the most ill-treated ? But a 
being that should remain incomplete and unfinished, that 
should not attain the end which all his instincts proclaim for 
him, would be a monster in the eternal order, — a problem 
much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have 
been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our 
opinion, this tendency of all the desires and all the powers 
of the soul towards the infinite, elucidated by the prin- 
ciple of final causes, is a serious and important confirma- 
tion of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of 
another life. 

When we have collected ail the arguments that autho- 



compatible. What is thinking ? Is it not uniting a certain number of 
ideas under a certain unity? The simplest judgment supposes several 
terms united in a subject, one and identical, which is rue. This identical 
me is implied in every real act of knowledge. It has been demonstrated 
to satiety that comparison exacts an indivisible centre that comprises the 
different terms of the comparison. Do you take memory ? There is no 
memory possible without the continuation of the same subject that refers 
to self the different modifications by which it has been successively affected. 
Finally, consciousness, that indispensable condition of intelligence, — is it 
not the sentiment of a single being ? This is the reason why each man 
cannot think without saying me, without affirming that he is himself the 
identical and one subject of his thoughts. I am me and always vie, as you 
are always yourself in the most different acts of your life. You are not 
more yourself to-day than you were yesterday, and you are not les3 your- 
self to-day than you were yesterday. This identity and this indivisible 



392 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

rise belief in another life, and when we have thus arrived 
at a satisfying demonstration, there remains an obstacle 
to be overcome. Imagination cannot contemplate with- 
out fright that unknown which is called death. The 
greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank 
wider than it is necessary in order to go without danger 
from one side of an abyss to the other, cannot think with- 
out trembling on the abyss that is beneath him. It is 
not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it is also 
imagination that in great part causes that remnant of 
doubt, that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest 
faith cannot always succeed in overcoming in the presence 
of death. The religious man experiences this terror, but 
lie knows whence it comes, and he surmounts it by attach- 
ing himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and 
the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, 
by putting it under the discipline and government of 
better faculties ; it must be accustomed to go to intelli- 
gence for aid instead of troubling intelligence with its 
phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a terrible 



unity of the me inseparable from the least thought, is what is called its 
spirituality, in opposition to the evident and necessary characters of matter. 
By what, in fact, do you know matter ? It is especially by form, by ex- 
tension, by something solid that stops you, that resists you in different 
points of space. But is not a solid essentially divisible ? Take the most 
subtile fluids, — can you help conceiving them as more or less susceptible 
of division ? All thought has its different elements like matter, but in 
addition it has its unity in the thinking subject, and the subject being taken 
away, which is one, the total phenomenon no longer exists. Far from 
that, the unknown subject to which we attach material phenomena is divi- 
sible, and divisible ad infinitum; it cannot cease to be divisible without 
ceasing to exist. Such are the ideas that we have, on the one side, of 
mind, on the other, of matter. Thought supposes a subject essentially 
one ; matter is infinitely divisible. What is the need of going farther? 
If any conclusion is legitimate, it is that which distinguishes thought from 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 393 

step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles 
when face to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise 
to present ourselves there with all our forces united, — 
reason and the heart lending each other mutual support, 
the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us con- 
tinually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is 
sure to find God, and that with God all is just, all is 
good. 1 

"We now know what God truly is. We have already 
seen two of his adorable attributes, — truth and beauty. 
The most august attribute is revealed to us, — holiness. 
God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law 
and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and 
charity, as the dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a 
God is not an abstract God, but an intelligent and free 
person, who has made us in his own image, from whom we 
hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose 
judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our 
acts of charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, 
that of our societies and our laws. If we do not continu- 

matter. God can indeed make them exist together, and their co-existence is 
a certain fact, but he cannot confound them. God can unite thought and 
matter, he cannot make matter thought, nor what is extended simple." 

1 4th Series, vol. iii., Santa-Rosa: "After all, the existence of a di- 
vine Providence is, to my eyes, a truth clearer than all lights, more certain 
than all mathematics. Yes, there is a God, a God who is a true intelli- 
gence, who consequently has a consciousness of himself, who has made and 
ordered every thing with weight and measure, whose works are excellent, 
whose ends are adorable, even when they are veiled from our feeble eyes. 
This world has a perfect author, perfectly wise and good. Man is not an 
orphan; he has a father in heaven. What will this father do with his child 
when he returns to him? Nothing but what is good. Whatever happens, 
all will be well. Every thing that he has done ha3 been done well; every 
thing that he shall do, I accept beforehand, and bless. Yes, such is my un- 
alterable faith, and this faith is my support, my refuge, my consolation, my 
solace in this fearful moment." 



39 i LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

ally remind ourselves that lie is infinite, we degrade his 
nature; but he would be for us as if he were not, if his in- 
finite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the proper 
forms of our reason and our soul. 

By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment, 
that is par excellence the religious sentiment. All the 
beings with whom we are in relation awaken in us diffe- 
rent sentiments, according to the qualities that we per- 
ceive in them ; and should he who possesses all perfections 
excite in us no particular sentiment! When we think 
upon the infinite essence of God, when we are penetrated 
with his omnipotence, when we are reminded that the 
moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the fulfil- 
ment and the violation of this law recompenses and penal- 
ties which he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we can- 
not guard ourselves against an emotion of respect and 
fear at the idea of such a grandeur. Then, if we come to 
consider that this all-powerful being has indeed wished to 
create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us 
he has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this 
admirable universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, 
society for ennobling our life in that of our fellow-men, 
reason for thinking, the heart for loving, liberty for act- 
ing; without disappearing, respect and fear are tinged 
with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is 
applied to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a 
desire to do good to them; but in itself it proposes to it- 
self no advantage from the person loved ; we love a beau- 
tiful or good object, because it is beautiful or good, with- 
out at first regarding whether this love may be useful to 
its object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, 
love, when it ascends to God, is a pure homage rendered 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 395 

to his perfections ; it is the natural overflow of the soul 
towards a being infinitely lovable. 

Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration 
does not exist without possessing both of these sentiments. 
If you consider only the all-poweful God, master of heaven 
and earth, author and avenger of justice, you crush man 
beneath the weight of the grandeur of Grod and his own 
feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in 
the uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate 
the world, life, and himself, for every thing is full of 
misery. Towards this extreme, Port-Royal inclines. Read 
the Pensees de Pascal. 1 In his great humility, Pascal 
forgets two things, — the dignity of man and the love of 
God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God 
and the indulgent father, you incline to a chimerical 
mysticism. By substituting love for fear, little by little 
with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God is no 
more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea 
of a father still to a certain point involves that of a res- 
pectful fear; he is no more anything but a friend, some- 
times even a lover. True adoration does not separate 
love and respect; it is respect animated by love. 

Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees 
according to different natures; it takes the most different 
forms; it is often even ignorant of itself; sometimes 
it is revealed by an exclamation springing from the 
heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life, 
sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated 
soul; it may err in its expressions, even in its object; but 
at bottom it is always the same. It is a spontaneous, 
irresistible emotion of the soul; and when reason is ap- 

1 See our discussion on the Pensees de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Scries. 



396 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

plied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in 
fact, is more just than to fear the judgments of him who 
is holiness itself, who knows our actions and our inten- 
tions, and will judge them according to the highest justice? 
What, too, is more just than to love perfect goodness and 
the source of all love? Adoration is at first a natural 
sentiment ; reason makes it a duty. 

Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what 
is called internal worship — the necessary principle of all 
public worships. 

Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than 
society and government, language and arts. All these 
things have their roots in human natnre. Adoration 
abandoned to itself, would easily degenerate into dreams 
and ecstasy, or would be dissipated in the rush of affairs 
and the necessities of every day. The more energetic it 
is, the more it tends to express itself outwardly in acts 
that realise it, to take a sensible, precise, and regular 
form, which, by a proper re-action on the sentiment that 
produced it, awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it when 
it languishes, and also protects it against extravagances of 
every kind to which it might give birth in so many feeble 
or unbridled imaginations. Philosophy, then, lays the na- 
tural foundation of public worship in the internal worship of 
adoration. Having arrived at that point, it stops, equally 
careful not to betray its rights and not to go beyond them, 
to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest limit, 
the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a 
foreign domain. 

But philosophy does not think of trespassing on the 
ground of theology; it wishes to remain faithful to itself, 
and also to follow its true mission, which is to love and 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 397 

favour everything that tends to elevate man, since it 
heartily applauds the awakening of religious and Chris- 
tian sentiment in all noble souls, after the ravages that 
have been made on every hand, for more than a century, 
by a false and sad philosophy. What, in fact, would not 
have been the joy of a Socrates and a Plato if they had 
found the human race in the arms of Christianity! How 
happy would Plato — who was so evidently embarrassed 
between his beautiful doctrines and the religion of his 
times, who managed so carefullv with that relic-ion even 
when he avoided it, who was forced to take from it the 
best possible part, in order to aid a favourable interpreta- 
tion of his doctrine — have been, if he had had to do with 
a religion which presents to man, as at once its author and 
its model, the sublime and mild Crucified, of whom he had 
an extraordinary presentiment, whom he almost described 
in the person of a just man dying on the cross; 1 a religion 
which came to announce, or at least to conseqrate and 
expand the idea of the unity of God and that of the 
unity of the human race; which proclaims the equality of 
all souls before the divine law, which thereby has prepared 
and maintains civil equality; which prescribes charity still 
more than justice, which teaches man that he does not live 
by bread alone, that he is not wholly contained in his 
senses and his body, that he has a soul, a free soul, whose 
value is infinite, above the value of all worlds, that life is 
a trial, that its true object is not pleasure, fortune, rank, 
none of those things that do not pertain to our real des- 
tiny, and are often more dangerous than useful, but is 
that alone which is always in our power, in all situations 
and all conditions, from end to end of the earth, to wit, 

1 See the end of the first book of the HepxAUc, vol. ix. of our translation. 



o98 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

the improvement of the soul by itself, in the holy hope of 
becoming from day to day less unworthy of the regard of 
the Father of men, of the examples given by him, and of 
his promises. If the greatest moralist that ever lived 
could have seen these admirable teachings, which in germ 
were already at the foundation of his spirit, of which 
more than one trait can be found in his works, if he 
had seen them consecrated, maintained, continually re- 
called to the heart and imagination of man by sublime and 
touching institutions, what would have been his tender 
and grateful sympathy for such a religion! If he had 
come in our own times, in that age given up to revolutions, 
in which the best souls were early infected by the breath 
of scepticism, in default of the faith of an Augustine, of an 
Anselm, of a Thomas, of a Bossuet, he w T ould have had, we 
doubt not, the sentiments at least of a Montesquieu, 1 of a 
Turgot, 2 of a Franklin, 3 and very far from putting the 
Christian religion and a good philosophy at war with each 
other, he would have been forced to unite them, to eluci- 
date and fortify them by each other. That great mind 
and that great heart, which dictated to him the Phedon, the 
Gorgias, the Republic, would also have taught him that 
such books are made for a few sages, that there is needed 
forthe human race aphilosophyat once similar and different, 
that this philosophy is a religion, and that this desirable 



1 Esprit ties Lois, p>assim. 

2 Works of Turgot, vol. ii., Discours en Sorbonne sur lea Avantages qve, 
ietablissement du Christianism a procures au Genre Humain, etc. 

3 Jn the Correspondence, the letter to Dr. Stiles, March 9, 1790, written 
by Franklin a few months before his death: " I am convinced that the 
moral and religions system which Jesus Christ has transmitted to us is the 
best that the world has seen or can see." — We here re-translate, not having 
the works of Franklin immediately at hand. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 399 

and necessary religion is the Gospel. We do not hesitate to 
sav that, without religion, philosophy, reduced to what it 
can laboriously draw from perfected natural reason, ad- 
dresses itself to a very small number, and runs the risk of 
remaining without much influence on manners and life; and 
that, without philosophy, the purest religion is no security 
against many superstitions, which little by little bring all 
the rest, and for that reason it may see the best minds 
escaping its influence, as was the case in the eighteenth 
century. The alliance between true religion and true 
philosophy is, then, at once natural and necessary; natural 
by the common basis of the truths which they acknow- 
ledge; necessary for the better service of humanity. 
Philosophy and religion differ only in the forms that 
distinguish, without separating them. Another auditory, 
other forms, and another language. When St. Augustine 
speaks to all the faithful in the church of Hippone, do not 
seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who 
combatted the Academicians with their own arms, who 
supports himself on the Platonic theory of ideas, in order 
to explain the creation. Bossuet, in the treatise De le 
Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-meme, is no longer, and at 
the same time he is always, the author of the Sermons, 
of the Elevations, and the incomparable Catechisme de 
Meaux. To separate religion and philosophy has always 
been, on one side or the other, the pretension of small, 
exclusive, and fanatical minds; the duty, more imperative 
now than ever, of whomsoever has for either a serious and 
enlightened love, is to bring together and unite, instead 
of dividing and wasting the powers of the mind and the 
soul, in the interest of the common cause and the great 
object which the Christian religion and philosophy pursue, 



400 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

each in its own way, — I mean the moral grandeur of 
humanity. 1 

1 We have not ceased to claim, to earnestly call for, the alliance between 
Christianity and philosophy, as well as the alliance between the monai'chy 
and liberty. See particularly 3rd Series, vol. iv ., Philosophic Contemporaine, 
preface of the second edition ; 4th Series, vol. i., Pascal, 1st and 2d preface, 
passim; 5th Series, vol. ii., Biscours a la Chambredes Paris pour le Defence 
do rUniversife it de la Philosophic We everywhere profess the most ten- 
der veneration for Christianity, — we have only repelled the servitude of 
philosophy, with Descartes, and the most illustrious doctors of ancient and 
modern times, from St. Augustine and St. Thomas, to the Cardinal de la 
Lucerne and the Bishop of Hermopolis. Moreover, we love to think that 
those quarrels, originating in other times from the deplorable strife between 
the clergy and the University, have not survived it, and that now all sincere 
friends of religion and philosophy will give each other the hand, and will work 
in concert to encourage desponding souls and lift up burdened characters. 



401 



LECTURE XVII. 

RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 

Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three orders of 
facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation of each one of them 
to the modern school that has recognised and developed it, but almost 
always exaggerated it. — Experience and empiricism. — Reason and ideal- 
ism. — Sentiment and mysticism. — Theodicea. Defects of different known 
systems. — The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the cha- 
racter of certainty and reality that this process gives to it. 

Haying arrived at the limit of this course, we have a 
final task to perform, — it is necessary to recall its general 
spirit and most important results. 

From the first lecture, I have signalized to you the 
spirit that should animate this instruction, — a spirit of 
free inquiry, recognising with joy the truth wherever 
found, profiting by all the systems that the eighteenth 
century has bequeathed to our times, but confining itself 
to none of them. 

The eighteenth century has left to us as an inheritance 
three great schools which still endure — the English and 
French school, whose chief is Locke, among whose most 
accredited representatives are Condillac, Helvetius, and 
Saint-Lambert; the Scotch school, with so many cele- 
brated names, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, Beattie, Ferguson, 
and Dugald Stewart ; l the German school, or rather school 

1 Still living in 1818, die 1 in 1828. 

S 



402 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

of Kant, for, of all the philosophers beyond the Rhine, 
the philosopher of Koenigsberg is almost the only one 
who belongs to history. Kant died at the beginning of 
the nineteenth century; 1 the ashes of his most illustrious 
disciple, Fichte, 2 are scarcely cold. The other renowned 
philosophers of Germany still live, 3 and escape our valua- 
tion. 

But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the 
schools of the eighteenth century. It is above all neces- 
sary to consider them in their characters, analogous or 
opposite. The Anglo-French school particularly repre- 
sents empiricism and sensualism, that is to say, an almost 
exclusive importance attributed in all parts of human 
knowledge to experience in general, and especially to 
sensible experience. The Scotch school and the German 
school represent a more or less developed spiritualism. 
Finally, there are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson, 
Smith, and others, who, mistrusting the senses and reason, 
give the supremacy to sentiment. 

Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of 
which the nineteenth century is placed. 

We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our 
eyes, contains the entire truth. It has been demonstrated 
that a considerable part of knowledge escapes sensation, 
and we think that sentiment is a basis neither sufficiently 
firm, nor sufficiently broad, to support all human science. 
We are, therefore, rather the adversary than the partisan 
of the school of Locke and Condillac, and of that of 



1 In 1804. a Died 1814. 

3 This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and Schleiermacher, 
-with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone survives the ruins 
of the German philosophy. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 403 

Hutclieson and Smith. Are we on that account the dis- 
ciple of Reid and Kant ? Yes, certainly, we declare our 
preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by 
these two o-reat men. We regard Reid as common sense 
itself, and we believe that we thus eulogise him in a 
manner that would touch him most. Common sense is 
to us the only legitimate point of departure, and the con- 
stant and inviolable rule of science. Reid never errs; 
his method is true, his general principles are incontestable, 
but we will willingly say to this irreproachable genius, — 
Sapere aude. Kant is far from being as sure a guide as 
Reid. Both excel in analysis ; but Reid stops there, and 
Kant builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with 
it. He elevates reason above sensation and sentiment; he 
shows with great skill how reason produces by itself, and 
by the laws attached to its exercise, nearly all human 
knowledge ; there is only one misfortune, which is that all 
this fine edifice is destitute of reality. Dogmatical in 
analysis, Kant is sceptical in his conclusions. His scepti- 
cism is the most learned, most moral, that ever existed; 
but, in fine, it is always scepticism. This is saying plainly 
enough that we are far from belonging to the school of 
the philosopher of Kcenigsberg. 

In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favour 
of systems that are themselves in favour of reason. Ac- 
cordingly, in antiquity, we side with Plato against his 
adversaries ; among the moderns, with Descartes against 
Locke, with Reid against Hume, with Kant against both 
Condillac and Smith. But while we acknowledge reason 
as a power superior to sensation and sentiment, as being, 
par excellence, the faculty of every kind of knowledge, the 
faculty of the true, the faculty of the beautiful, the faculty 



404 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot -be 
developed without conditions that are foreign to it, can- 
not suffice for the government of man without the aid of 
another power: — that power which is not reason, which 
reason cannot do without, is sentiment; those conditions, 
without which reason cannot be developed, are the senses. 
It is seen what for us is the importance of sensation and 
sentiment; how, consequently, it is impossible for us abso- 
lutely to condemn either the philosophy of sensation, or, 
much more, that of sentiment. 

Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. 
It is not in us the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for 
making ourself a place apart among the historians of phi- 
losophy; no, it is philosophy itself that imposes on us our 
historical views. It is not our fault if God has made the 
human soul larger than all systems, and we also aver that 
we are also much rejoiced that all systems are not absurd. 
Without giving the lie to the most certain facts signalized 
and established by ourself, it was indeed necessary, on 
finding them scattered in the history of philosophy, to 
recognise and respect them, and if the history of philo- 
sophy, thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of 
senseless systems, a chaos, without light, and without 
issue; if, on the contrary, it became, in some sort, a living 
philosophy, that was, it should seem, a progress on which 
one might felicitate himself, one of the most fortunate 
conquests of the nineteenth century, the very triumphing 
of the philosophic spirit. 

We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence 
of the enterprise; the whole question for us is in the 
execution. Let us see, let us compare what we have done 
with what we have wished to do. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 405 

Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just 
towards that great philosophy represented in antiquity by 
Aristotle, whose best model among the moderns is the 
wise author of the Essay on the Human Understanding. 

There is in the philosophy of sensation what is true and 
what is false. The false is the pretension of explaining 
all human knowledge by the acquisitions of the senses ; 
this pretension is the system itself; we reject it, and the 
system with it. The true is that sensibility, considered 
in its external and visible organs, and in its internal 
organs, the invisible seats of the vital functions, is the in- 
dispensable condition of the development of all our facul- 
ties, not only of the faculties that evidently pertain to 
sensibility, but of those that seem to be most remote from 
it. This true side of sensualism we have everywhere re- 
cognised and elucidated in metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, 
and theodicea. 

For us, theodicea, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest 
on psychology, and the first principle of our psychology 
is that the condition of all exercise of mind and soul is an 
impression made on our organs, and a movement of the 
vital functions. 

Man is not a pure spirit ; he has a body which is for 
the spirit sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, 
always an inseparable companion. The senses are not, as 
Plato and Malebtanche have too often said, a prison for 
the soul, but much rather windows looking out upon 
nature, through which the soul communicates with the 
universe. There is an entire part of Locke's polemic 
against the theories of innate ideas that is to our eyes 
perfectly true. We are the first to invoke experience in 
philosophy. Experience saves philosophy from hypothesis, 



406 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

from abstraction, from the exclusively deductive method, 
that is to say, from the geometrical method. It is on account 
of having abandoned the solid ground of experience, that 
Spinoza, attaching himself to certain sides of Cartesianism, 1 
and closing his eyes to all the others, forgetting its method, 
its essential character, and its most certain principles, 
reared a hypothetical system, or made from an arbitrary 
definition spring with the last degree of rigour a whole 
series of deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. 
It is also on account of having exchanged experience for 
a systematic analysis, that Condillac, an unfaithful dis- 
ciple of Locke, undertook to draw from a single fact, and 
from an ill-observed fact, all knowledge, by the aid of a 
series of verbal transformations, whose last result is a 
nominalism, like that of the later scholastics. Experience 
does not contain all science, but it furnishes the condi- 
tions of all science. Space is nothing for us without 
visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time is nothing 
without the succession of events, cause without its effects, 
substance without its modes, law without the phenomena 
that it rules. 2 Reason would reveal to us no universal and 
necessary truth, if consciousness and the senses did not 
suggest to us particular and contingent notions. In 
aesthetics, while severely distinguishing between the 
beautiful and the agreeable, we have shown that the agree- 
able is the constant accompaniment of the beautiful, 3 and 
that if art has for its supreme law the expression of the 
ideal, it must express it under an animated and living 
form which puts it in relation with our senses, with our 

1 Fragments de Philosophie Cartesienne, p. 429 : Des Rapports du 
(.'u-tesienisme et du Spinozisme. 

2 Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2. 3 Part 2nd. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 407 

imagination, above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we 
have placed Kant and stoicism far above epicureanism 
and Helvetius, we have guarded ourselves against an in- 
sensibility and an ascetism which are contrary to human 
nature. We have given to reason neither the duty nor 
the right to smother the natural passions, but to rule 
them; we have not wished to wrest from the soul the in- 
stinct of happiness, without which life would not be sup- 
portable for a day, nor society for an hour; we have pro- 
posed to enlighten this instinct, to show it the concealed 
but real harmony which it sustains with virtue, and to 
open to it infinite prospects. 1 

With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from 
that mystical infatuation which, little by little, gains and 
seizes it when it is wholly alone, and brings it into dis- 
credit with sound and severe minds. In our works — and 
why should we not say it? — we have often presented the 
thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and 
most sensible men that ever lived. He is among those 
secret and illustrious advisers with whom we support our 
weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to him; 
and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed 
with the circumspect method which we try to carry into 
ours, would not have been accepted by his sincerity and 
wisdom. Locke is for us the true representative, the 
most original, and altogether the most temperate of the 
empirical school. Tied to a system, he still preserves a 
rare spirit of liberty, — under the name of reflection he 
admits another source of knowledge than sensation; and 
this concession to common sense is very important. Con- 
dillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes 

1 Part 3rd. 



408 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a nar- 
row, exclusive, entirely false system, — sensualism, to 
speak properly. Condillac works upon cliimeras reduced 
to signs, with which he sports at his ease. We seek in 
vain in his writings, especially in the last, some trace of 
human nature. One truly believes himself to be in the 
realm of shades, per inania regnal The Essay on the 
Human Understanding produces the opposite impression. 
Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the excesses of 
Malebranche have thrown to an opposite excess: he is one 
of the founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and 
and most profound connoisseurs of human nature, and his 
doctrine, somewhat unsteady but always moderate, is 
worthy of having a place in a true eclecticism. 2 

By the side of ■■ the philosophy of Locke, there is one 
much greater, which it is important to preserve from all 
exaggeration, in order to maintain it in all its height. 
Founded in antiquity by Socrates, constituted by Plato, 
renewed by Descartes, idealism embraces, among the 
moderns, men of the highest renown. It speaks to man 
in the name of what is noblest in man. It demands the 
rights of reason ; it establishes in science, in art, and in 
ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this imper- 
fect existence it elevates us towards another world, the 
world of the eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute. 

This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we 
shall not be accused of having given it too little place in 
these lectures. In the eighteenth century it was especially 

1 On Condillac, 1st Series, vol. i., passim, and particularly vol. iii., 
lectures 2 and 3. 

2 We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even 
while combatting him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, Discours 
d'Ouverture, vol. i i., lecture 1, and especially 2nd Series, vol. iii., passim. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 409~ 

represented in different degrees, by Reid and Kant. We 
wholly accept Reid, with the exception of his historical 
views, which are too insufficient, and often mixed with 
error. 1 There are two parts in Kant, — the analytical part 
and the dialectical part, as he calls them. 2 We admit the 
one and reject the other. In this whole course we have 
borrowed much from the Critique of Speculative Reason, the 
Critique of Judgment, and the Critique of Practical Reason. 
These three works are, in our eyes, admirable monuments 
of philosophic genius, — they are filled with treasures of ob- 
servation and analysis. 3 

With Reid and Kant, we recognise reason as the faculty 
of the true, the beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper 
virtue that we directly refer knowledge in its humblest 
and in its most elevated part. All the systematic preten- 
sions of sensualism are broken against the manifest reality 
of universal and necessary truths which are incontestably 
in our mind. At each instant, whether we know it or 
not, we bear universal and necessary judgments. In the 
simplest propositions is enveloped the principle of sub- 
stance and being. We cannot take a step in life without 
concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. 
These principles are absolutely true, they are true every- 
where and always. Now, experience apprises us of what 

1 See 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on Keid. 

8 Ibid., vol. v. 

3 For more than twenty years we have thought of translating and 
publishing the three Critiques, joining to them a selection from the smaller 
productions of Kant. Time has been wanting to us for the completion of 
our design; but a young and skilful professor of philosophy, a graduate 
of the Normal School, has been willing to supply our place, and to under- 
take to give to the French public a faithful and intelligent version of the 
greatest thinker of the eighteenth century. M. Barni has worthily com- 
menced the useful and difficult enterprise which we have remitted to lus 
zeal, and pursues it with courage and talent. 



410 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

happens here and there, to-day or yesterday ; but of what 
happens everywhere and always, especially of what cannot 
but happen, how can it apprise us, since it is itself always 
limited to time and space? There are, then, in man prin- 
ciples superior to experience. 

Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. 
Phenomena are the objects of science only so far as they 
reveal something superior to themselves, that is to say, laws. 
Natural history does not study such or such an individual, 
but the generic type that every individual bears in itself, 
that alone remains unchangeable, when the individuals 
pass away and vanish. If there is in us no other faculty 
of knowing than sensation, we never know aught but 
what is passing in things, and that, too, we know only 
with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensibility will 
be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and so 
different in different individuals. Each of us will have his 
own science, a science contradictory and fragile, which 
one moment produces and another destroys, false as well 
as true, since what is true for me is false for you, and will 
even be false for me in a little while. Such are science 
and truth in the doctrine of sensation. On the contrary, 
necessary and immutable principles found a science neces- 
sary and immutable as themselves, — the truth which they 
gave us is neither mine nor yours, neither the truth of 
to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth in itself. 

The same spirit transferred to aesthetics has enabled us 
to seize the beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, 
above different and imperfect beauties which nature offers 
to us, to seize an ideal beauty, one and perfect, without a 
model in nature, and the only model worthy of genius. 
In ethics we have shown that there is an essential dis- 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 41 1 

tinction between good and evil; that the idea of the good 
is an idea just as absolute as the idea of the beautiful and 
that of the true; that the good is a universal and necessary 
truth, marked with the particular character that it ought 
to be practised. By the side of interest, which is the law 
of sensibility, reason has made us recognise the law of 
duty, which a free being can alone fulfil. From these 
ethics has sprung a generous political doctrine, giving to 
right a sure foundation in the respect due to the person, 
establishing true liberty, and true equality, and calling for 
institutions, protective of both, which do not rest on the 
mobile and arbitrary will of the legislator, whether people 
or monarch, but on the nature of things, on truth and 
justice. 

From empiricism we have retained the maxim which 
gives empiricism its whole force — that the conditions of 
science, of art, of ethics, are in experience, and often in 
sensible experience. But we profess at the same time 
this other maxim, that the foundation of science is abso- 
lute truth, that the direct foundation of art is absolute 
beauty, that the direct foundation of ethics and politics 
is the good, is duty, is right, and that what reveals to us 
these absolute ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the 
good, is reason. The foundation of our doctrine is, there- 
fore, idealism rightly tempered by empiricism. 

But what would be the use of having restored to reason 
the power of elevating itself to absolute principles, placed 
above experience, although experience furnishes their ex- 
ternal conditions, if, to adopt the language of Kant, 1 these 
principles have no objective value ? What good could re- 
sult from having determined with a precision until then 

1 Part 1st, Lecture 3. 



412 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

unknown the respective domains of experience and rea- 
son, if, wholly superior as it is to the senses and expe- 
rience, reason is captive in their enclosure, and we know 
nothing beyond with certainty ? Thereby, then, we re- 
turn by a detour to scepticism to which sensualism con- 
ducts us directly, and at less expense. To say that there 
is no principle of causality, or to say that this principle has 
no force out of the subject that possesses it, — is it not say- 
ing the same thing ? Kant avows that man has no right 
to affirm that there are out of him real causes, time, or 
space, or that he himself has a spiritual and free soul. 
This acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume ; it 
would be of very little importance to him that the reason 
of man, according to Kant, might conceive, and even, could 
not but conceive, the ideas of cause, time, space, liberty, 
spirit, provided these ideas are applied to nothing real. I 
see therein, at most, only a torment for human reason, at 
once so poor and so rich, so full and so void. 

A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also 
discontented with reason, which it confounds with reason- 
ing, thinks to approach common sense by making science, 
art, and ethics, rest on sentiment. It would have us con- 
fide ourselves to the instinct of the heart, to that instinct, 
nobler than sensation, and more subtle than reasoning. 
Is it not the heart, in fact, that feels the beautiful and the 
good ? Is it not the heart that, in all the great circum- 
stances of life, when passion and sophism obscure to our 
eyes the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it shine forth 
with an irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms 
us, animates us, and gives us the courage to practise it? 

We also have recognised that admirable phenomenon 
which is called sentiment; we even believe that here will 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 413 

be found a more precise and more complete analysis of it 
than in the writings where sentiment reigns alone. Yes, 
there is an exquisite pleasure attached to the contempla- 
tion of the truth, to the reproduction of the beautiful, to 
the practice of the good ; there is in us an innate love for 
all these things; and when great rigour is not aimed at, 
it may very well be said that it is the heart which discerns 
truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light and 
guide of our life. 

To the eyes of an unpractised analysis, reason in its 
natural and spontaneous exercise is confounded with senti- 
ment by a multitude of resemblances. 1 Sentiment is inti- 
mately attached to reason; it is its sensible form. At 
the foundation of sentiment is reason, which communi- 
cates to it its authority, whilst sentiment lends to reason 
its charm and power. Is not the widest spread and the 
most touching proof of the existence of God that spon- 
taneous impulse of the heart which, in the consciousness 
of our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of 
our race which press upon our attention, irresistibly sug- 
gests to us the confused idea of an infinite and perfect 
being, fills us, at this idea, with an inexpressible emotion, 
moistens our eyes with tears, or even prostrates us on our 
knees before him whom the heart reveals to us, even when 
the reason refuses to believe in him ? But look more 
closely, and you will see that this incredulous reason is 
reasoning supported by principles whose bearing is insuffi- 
cient; you will see that what reveals the infinite and per- 
fect being is precisely reason itself; 2 and that, in turn, it 

1 Lecture 5, Mysticism. 

2 This pretended proof of sentiment is, in fact, the Cartesian proof itself. 
See lectures 4 and 16. 



414 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

is this revelation of the infinite by reason, which, passing 
into sentiment, produces the emotion and the inspiration 
that we have mentioned. May heaven grant that we 
shall never reject the aid of sentiment ! On the contrary, 
we invoke it both for others and ourself. Here we are 
with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the 
light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, 
but reflects it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that 
we confide ourselves, in order to preserve all great truths 
in the soul of the ignorant, and even to save them in the 
mind of the philosopher from the aberrations or refine- 
ments of an ambitious philosophy. 

We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the 
nobility of sentiment makes the nobility of thought. 
Enthusiasm is the principle of great works as well as of 
great actions. Without the love of the beautiful, the artist 
will produce only works that are perhaps regular but 
frigid, that will possibly please the geometrician, but not 
the man of taste. In order to communicate life to the 
canvass, to the marble, to speech, it must be born in one's 
self. It is the heart mingled with logic that makes true 
eloquence; it is the heart mingled with imagination that 
makes great poetry. Think of Homer, of Corneille, of 
Bossuet, — their most characteristic trait is pathos, and 
pathos is a cry of the soul. But it is especially in ethics 
that sentiment shines forth. Sentiment, as we have 
already said, is as it were a divine grace that aids us in 
the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. 
How often does it happen that in delicate, complicated, 
difficult situations, we know not how to ascertain wherein 
is the true, wherein is the good! Sentiment comes to the 
aid of reasoning which wavers ; it speaks, and all uncer- 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 415 

tainties are dissipated. In listening to its inspirations, 
we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill: the voice 
of the heart is the voice of God. 

We, therefore, give a prominent place to this noble 
element of human nature. We believe that man is quite 
as great by heart as by reason. We have a high regard 
for the generous writers who, in the looseness of principles 
and manners in the eighteenth century, opposed the base- 
ness of calculation and interest with the beauty of senti- 
ment. We are with Hutcheson against. Hobbes, with 
Rousseau against Helvetius, with the author of Woldemar 1 
against the ethics of egoism or those of the schools. We 
borrow from them what truth they have, we leave their 
useless or dangerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be 
joined to reason; but reason must not be replaced by sen- 
timent. In the first place, it is contrary to facts to take 
reason for reasoning, and to envelop them in the same 
criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the legitimate 
instrument of reason ; its value is determined by that of 
the principles on which it rests. In the next place, 
reason, and especially spontaneous reason, is, like senti- 
ment, immediate and direct; it goes straight to its 
object, without passing through analysis, abstraction, and 
deduction, excellent operations without doubt, but they 
suppose a primary operation, the pure and simple apper- 
ception of the truth. 2 It is wrong to attribute this apper- 
ception to sentiment. Sentiment is an emotion, not a 
judgment; it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it does 
not know. It is not universal like reason ; and as it still 



1 M. Jacobi. See the Manual of the History of Philosophy, by Tenne- 
mann, vol. ii., p. 318. 

2 On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. 2 and 3. 



41 6 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH, 

pertains on some side to organization, it even borrows 
from the organization something of its inconstancy. In 
fine, sentiment follows reason, and does not precede it. 
Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the senti- 
ment which emanates from it, and science, art, and 
ethics lack firm and solid bases. 

Psychology, aesthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to 
an order of investigations more difficult and more elevated, 
which are mingled with all the others, and crown them — 
theodicea. 

We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We 
might shun it, and stop in the regions — already very 
high — of the universal and necessary principles of the 
true, the beautiful, and the good, without going farther, 
without ascending to the principles of these principles, to 
the reason of reason, to the source of truth. But such a 
prudence is, at bottom, only a disguised scepticism. 
Either philosophy is not, or it is the last explanation of all 
things. Is it, then, true that God is to us an inexplicable 
enigma, — he without whom the most certain of all things 
that thus far we have discovered would be for us an insup- 
portable enigma? If philosophy is incapable of arriving 
at the knowledge of God, it is powerless; for if it does not 
possess God, it possesses nothing. But we are convinced 
that the need of knowing has not been given us in vain, 
and that the desire of knowing the principle of our being 
bears witness to the right and power of knowing which we 
have. Accordingly, after having discoursed to you about 
the true, the beautiful, and the good, we have not feared 
to speak to you of God. 

More than one road may lead us to God. We do not 
pretend to close any of them ; but it was necessary for us to 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 417 

follow the one that was open to us, that which the nature 
and subject of our instruction opened to us. 

Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas 
which our mind draws hy way of reasoning from particular 
things ; for particular things are relative and contingent, 
and cannot contain the universal and necessary. On the 
other hand, these truths do not subsist by themselves; they 
would thus be only pure abstractions, suspended in vacuity 
and without relation to anything. Truth, beauty, and 
goodness, are attributes and not entities. Now there are 
no attributes without a subject. And as here the question 
is concerning absolute truth, beauty, and goodness, their 
substance can be nothing else than absolute being. It is 
thus that we arrive at God. Once more, there are many 
other means of arriving at him; but we hold fast to this 
legitimate and sure way. 

For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a 
too narrow interpretation, 1 absolute truth is in God, — it is 
God himself under one of his phases. Since Plato, the 
greatest minds, Saint Augustine, Descartes, Bossuet, 
Leibnitz, agree in putting in God, as in their source, the 
principles of knowledge as well as existence. From him 
things derive at once their intelligibility and their being. 
It is by the participation of the divine reason that our 
reason possesses something absolute. Every judgment of 
reason envelops a necessary truth, and every necessary 
truth supposes necessary being. 

If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will 
possess beauty in its plenitude. The father of the world, 
of its laws, of its ravishing harmonies, the author of forms, 
colours, and sounds, he is the principle of beauty in nature. 

1 Lectures 4 and 5. 



418 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

It is he whom wc adore, without knowing it, under the 
name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from 
beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it 
may find repose. It is to him that the artist, discontented 
with the imperfect beauties of nature and those that he 
creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations. It is 
in him that are summed up the main forms of every kind 
of beauty, the beautiful and the sublime, since he satisfies 
all our faculties by his perfections, and overwhelms them 
with his infinitude. 

God is the principle of moral truths, as well as of 
all other truths. All our duties are comprised in justice 
and charity. These two great precepts have not been 
made by us ; they have been imposed on us ; from whom, 
then, can they come, except from a legislator essentially 
just and good? Therein, in our opinion, is an invincible 
demonstration of the divine justice and charity: — this de 
monstration elucidates and sustains all others. In this im- 
mense universe, of which we catch a glimpse of a com- 
paratively insignificant portion, everything, in spite of 
more than one obscurity, seems ordered in view of general 
good, and this plan attests a Providence. To the physical 
order which one in good faith can scarcely deny, add 
the certainty, the evidence of the moral order that we 
bear in ourselves. This order supposes the harmony 
of virtue and goodness; it therefore requires it. Without 
doubt this harmony already appears in the visible world, 
in the natural consequences of good and bad actions, in 
society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem 
and contempt, especially in the troubles and joys of 
conscience. Although this necessary law of order is 
not always exactly fulfilled, it nevertheless ought to 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 419 

be, or the moral order is not satisfied, and the inti- 
mate nature of things, their moral nature, remains 
violated, troubled, perverted. There must, then, be a 
being who takes it upon himself to fulfil, in a time 
that he has reserved to himself, and in a manner that 
will be proper, the order of which he has put in us 
the inviolable need; and this being is again, God. 

Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of 
aesthetics, especially on that of ethics, we elevate our- 
selves to the same principle, the common centre, the 
last foundation, of all truth, all beauty, all goodness. 
The true, the beautiful, and the good, are only differ- 
ent revelations of the same being. Human intelligence, 
interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are in- 
contestably in it, always makes us the same response; 
it sends us back to the same explanation, — at the 
foundation of all, above all, God, always God. 

We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. 
We are in fellowship with the great philosophies which all 
proclaim a God, and, at the same time, with the religions 
that cover the earth, with the Christian religion, incom- 
parably the most perfect and the most holy. As long as 
philosophy has not reached natural religion, — and by this 
we mean, not the religion at which man arrives in that 
hypothetical state that is called the state of nature, but the 
religion which is revealed to us by the natural light accorded 
to all men, — it remains beneath all worship, even the most 
imperfect, which at least give to man a father, a witness, 
a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some 
sort from all religious beliefs their common principle, and 
returns it to them surrounded with light, elevated above 
all uncertainty, guarded against all attack. Philosophy 



420 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

may present itself in its turn to mankind ; it also has a 
right to man's confidence, for it speaks to him of God in 
the name of all his needs and all his faculties, in the 
name of reason and sentiment. 

Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions 
without any hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very 
simple and perfectly rigorous. Truths of different orders 
being given, truths which have not been made by us, 
and are not sufficient for themselves, we have ascended 
from these truths to their author, as one goes from the 
effect to the cause, from the si<m to the thiiiff signified, 
from phenomenon to being, from quality to subject. 
These two principles — that every effect supposes a cause, 
and every quality a subject — are universal and neces- 
sary principles. They have been put by us in their 
full lifi'ht, and demonstrated in the manner in which 
principles undemonstrable, because they are primitive, 
can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these ne- 
cessary principles applied? To metaphysical and moral 
truths, which are also necessary. It was therefore neces- 
sary to conclude in the existence of a cause and a neces- 
sary being, or, indeed, it was necessary to deny either the 
necessity of the principle of cause and the principle of 
substance, or the necessity of the truths to which we applied 
them, that is to say, to renounce all notions of common 
sense; for these very principles and these truths, with 
their character of universality and necessity, compose 
common sense. 

Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, 
and every quality a being, but it is equally certain that 
an effect of such a nature supposes a cause of the same 
nature, and that a quality or an attribute marked with 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 421. 

such or such essential characters supposes a being in 
which these same characters are again found in an emi- 
nent degree. Whence it follows, that we have very legi- 
timately concluded from truth in an intelligent cause 
and substance, from beauty in a being supremely beauti- 
ful, and from a moral law composed at once of justice and 
charity in a legislator supremely just and supremely good. 

And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical 
theodicea, after the example of many philosophers, and 
the most illustrious. We have not deduced the attributes 
of God from each other, as the different terms of an equa- 
tion are converted, or as from one property of a triangle 
the other properties are deduced, thus ending at a God 
wholly abstract, good perhaps for the schools, but not suf- 
ficient for the human race. We have given to theodicea 
a surer foundation — psychology. Our God is doubtless also 
the author of the world, but he is especially the father of 
humanity; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of 
essence and infinite power added. So our justice and our 
charity, related to their immortal exemplar, give us an 
idea of the divine justice and charity. Therein we see a 
real God, with whom we can sustain a relation also real, 
whom we can comprehend and feel, and who in his turn 
can comprehend and feel our efforts, our sufferings, our 
virtues, our miseries. Made in his image, conducted to 
him by a ray of his own being, there is between him and 
us a living and sacred tie. 

Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis 
and abstraction. By preserving ourselves from the one, 
we have preserved ourselves from the other. Consenting 
to recognise God only in his signs visible to the eyes and 
intelligible to the mind, it is on infallible evidence that we 



422 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

have elevated ourselves to God. By a necessary conse- 
quence, setting out from real effects and real attributes, we 
have arrived at a real cause and a real substance, at a cause 
having in power all its essential effects, at a substance 
rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of those who, in 
order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his 
pure and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative 
determination. I believe that I have for ever removed 
the root of such an extravagance. 1 No; it is not true that 
the diversity of determinations, and, consequently, of quali- 
ties and attributes, destroys the absolute unity of a being ; 
the infallible proof of it is that my unity is not the least in 
the world altered by the diversity of my faculties. It is 
not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and multiplicity 
unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. Why 
then should they not be in God? Moreover, far from alter- 
ing unity in me, multiplicity develops it and makes its pro- 
ductiveness appear. So the richness of the determinations 
and the attributes of God is exactly the sign of the pleni- 
tude of his being. To neglect his attributes, is therefore 
to impoverish him; we do not say enough, it is to annihi 
late him, — for a being without attributes exists not; and 
the abstraction of being, human or divine, finite or infinite, 
relative or absolute, is nonentity. 

Theodicea has two rocks, — one, which we have just 
signalized to you, is abstraction, the abuse of dialectics; it 
is the vice of the schools and metaphysics. If we are 
forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of being dashed 
against the opposite rock, I mean that fear of reasoning 
that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of 
sentiment, which developing in us the loving and affec- 
tionate faculties at the expense of all the others, throws 

1 See particurlarly lecture 5. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 423 

us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and makes us 
institute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in 
which we are somewhat too forgetful of the august and 
fearful majesty of the divine being. The tender and 
contemplative soul can neither love nor contemplate in 
God the necessity, the eternity, the infinity, that do not 
come within the sphere of imagination and the heart, that 
are only conceived. It therefore neglects them. Neither 
does it study God in truth of every kind, in physics, 
metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest him; it considers 
in him particularly the characters to which affection is 
attached. In adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that 
nothing but love may' subsist, and Mme. Guyon ends by 
loving God as a lover. 

We escape these opposite excesses of a refined senti- 
mentality and a chimerical abstraction, by always keeping 
in mind both the nature of God, by which he escapes all 
relation with us, — necessity, eternity, infinity, and at the 
same time those of his attributes which are our own 
attributes transferred to him, for the very simple reason 
that they came from him. 

I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations 
and by the signs which he gives of his existence, as I am 
able to conceive any being only by the attributes of that 
being, a cause only by its effects, as I am able to conceive 
myself only by the exercise of my faculties. Take away 
my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to 
me, and I am not for myself. It is the same with God, — 
take away nature and the soul, and every sign of God 
disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul that he 
must be sought and found. 

The universe, which comprises nature and man, mani- 



424 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

fests God. Is this saying that it exhausts God? By no 
means. Let us always consult psychology. I know myself 
only by my acts; that is certain; and what is not less 
certain is, that all my acts do not exhaust, do not equal 
my power and my substance; for my power, at least that 
of my will, can always add an act to all those which 
it has already produced, and it has the consciousness, 
at the sametime that it is exercised, of containing in 
itself something to be exercised still. Of God and the 
world must be said two things in appearance contrary, — 
we know God only by the world, and God is essentially 
distinct and different from the world. The first cause, 
like all secondary causes, manifests itself only by its 
effects; it can even be conceived only by them, and it 
surpasses them by all of the difference between the 
Creator and the created, the perfect and the imperfect. 
The world is indefinite; it is not infinite; for, whatever 
may be its quantity, thought can always add to it. 
To the myriads of worlds that compose the totality 
of the world, may be added new worlds. But God is 
infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an inde- 
finite series cannot equal the infinite; for the indefinite is 
nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and 
capable of continuous multiplication. The world is a 
whole which has its harmony; for a God could make 
only a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of 
the world corresponds to the unity of God, as indefinite 
quantity is a defective sign of the infinity of God. To 
say that the world is God, is to admit only the world and 
deny God. Give to this whatever name you please, it is 
at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to suppose that 
the world is void of God, and that God is separate from 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 425 

the world, is an insupportable and almost impossible 
abstraction. To distinguish is not to separate. I dis- 
tinguish myself, but do not separate myself from my 
qualities and my acts. So Grod is not the world, although 
he is in it everywhere present in spirit and in truth. 1 

1 "We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which 
it may he said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible, 1st 
Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12: " We say in the first place that God is 
not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, tbat, being the 
cause of this universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in it, as the cause 
in the effect; therefore we recognise him. ' The heavens declare his glory,' 
and ' the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being understood by the things that are made;' his power, in the 
thousands of worlds sown in the boundless regions of space; his intelligence 
in their harmonious laws; finally, tbat which there is in him most august, 
in the sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man 
contains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations 
have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. 
God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us; but God is 
not only the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause, 
possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree of 
imperfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not only the 
finite multiplied by itself in those proportions which the human mind is 
able always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation 
of all limits, in all the powers of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an 
indefinite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause; hence it is not true 
that we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and by man, 
for all of God is not in them. In order absolutely to comprehend the infi- 
nite, it is necessary to have an infinite power of comprehension, and that is 
not granted to us. God, in manifesting himself, retains something in him- 
self which nothing finite can absolutely manifest: consequently, it is not per- 
mitted us to comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond 
the universe and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. 
Hence in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the pro- 
fundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, 
whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new mani- 
festations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of this in- 
comprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea; for we have the most 
precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a metaphysical 
refinement, it is a simple and primitive conception which enlightens us from 
our entrance into this world, both luminous and obscure, explaining 
everything, and being explained by nothing, because it carries us at first to 

T 



426 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

Such is our theodicea: it rejects the excesses of all 
systems, and contains, we believe at least, all that is good 
in them. From sentiment it borrows a personal God as 
we ourselves are a person, and from reason a necessary, 
eternal, infinite God. In the presence of two opposite 
systems, — one of which, in order to see and feel God in 
the world, absorbs him in it; the other of which, in order 
not to confound God with the world, separates him from 
it and relegates him to an inaccessible solitude, — it gives 
to both just satisfaction by offering to them a God who is 
in fact in the world, since the world is his work, but 
without his essence being exhausted in it, a God who is 
both absolute unity and unity multiplied, infinite and 
living, immutable and the principle of movement, supreme 
intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice and 
sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are 
like nonentity, who, nevertheless, is pleased with the 
world and man, substance eternal, and cause inexhaust- 
able, impenetrable, and everywhere perceptible, who must 

the summit and the limit of all explanation. There is something inexpli- 
cable for thought, — behold then whither thought tends; there is infinite 
being, — behold then the necessary principle of all relative and finite beings. 
Reason explains not the inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to com- 
prehend infinity in an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some 
degree in its indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it; 
and, further, as it has been said, it comprehends it so far as incomprehen- 
sible. It is, therefore, an equal error to call God absolutely comprehensi- 
ble, and absolutely incomprehensible. He is both invisible and present, 
revealed and withdrawn in himself, in the world and out of the world, so 
familiar and intimate with his creatures, that we see him by opening our 
eyes, that we feel him in feeling our hearts beat, and at the same time 
inaccessible in his impenetrable majesty, mingled with everything, and sepa- 
rated from every thing, manifesting himself in universal life, and causing 
scarcely an ephemeral shadow of his eternal essence to appear there, com- 
municating himself without cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at 
once the living God, and the God concealed, 'Deus vivits et Deus obscon- 
ditux.' " 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 427 

by turns be sought in truth, admired in beauty, imitated, 
even at an infinite distance, in goodness and justice, vene- 
rated and loved, continually studied with an indefatigable 
zeal, and in silence adored. 

Let us sum up this resume. Setting out from the ob- 
servation of ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from 
hypothesis, we have found in consciousness three orders 
of facts. We have left to each of them its character, its 
rank, its bearing, and its limits. Sensation has appeared 
to us the indispensable condition, but not the foundation 
of knowledge. Reason is the faculty itself of knowing ; 
it has furnished us with absolute principles, and these 
absolute principles have conducted us to absolute truths. 
Sentiment, which pertains at once to sensation and reason, 
has found a place between both. Setting out from con- 
sciousness, but always guided by it, we have penetrated 
into the region of being; we have gone quite naturally 
from knowledge to its objects by the road that the human 
race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, or rather miscon- 
ceived at pleasure, to wit, that reason which must be ad- 
mitted entire or rejected entire, which reveals to us exis- 
tences as well as truths. Therefore, after having recalled 
all the great metaphysical, sesthetical, and moral truths, we 
have referred them to their principle ; with the human 
race we have pronounced the name of God, who explains 
all things, because he has made all things, whom all our 
faculties require, — reason, the heart, the senses, since he 
is the author of all our faculties. 

This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all 
our powers, is so conformed to all our instincts, that it 
scarcely appears a philosophic doctrine, and, at the same 
time, if you examine it more closely, if you compare it 



428 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

with all celebrated doctrines, you will find that it is re- 
lated to them and differs from them, that it is none 
of them and embraces them all, that it expresses pre- 
cisely the side of them that has made them live and 
sustains them in history. But that is only the scien- 
tific character of the doctrine which we present to you ; 
it has still another character which distinguishes it 
and recommends it to you much more. The spirit that 
animates it is that which of old inspired Socrates, Plato, 
and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts beat when 
you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated to 
Vauvenargues the few pages that have immortalized his 
name, which you feel especially in Reid, sustained by an 
admirable good sense, and even in Kant, in the midst of, 
and superior to the embarrassments of his metaphysics, to 
wit, the taste of the beautiful and the good in all things, 
the passionate love of honesty, the ardent desire of the 
moral grandeur of humanity. Yes, we do not fear to re- 
peat that we tend thither by all our views ; it is the end 
to which are related all the parts of our instruction; it is 
the thought which serves as their connexion, and is, thus 
to speak, their soul. May this thought be always present 
to you, and accompany you as a faithful and generous 
friend, wherever fortune shall lead you, under the tent of 
the soldier, in the office of the lawyer, of the physician, 
of the savant, in the study of the literary man, as well as 
in the studio of the artist! Finally, may it sometimes 
remind you of him who has been to you its very sincere 
but too feeble interpreter! 



APPENDIX. 



Page 212 : " What a destiny was that of Eustace Lesueur f 
It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the 
tradition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and 
which have misled the best judges before us. But there have 
appeared in a recent and interesting publication, called Archives 
de VArt frangais, vol. iii., certain incontrovertible documents, 
never before published, on the life and works of the painter of 
St. Bruno, which compel us to withdraw certain assertions agree- 
able to general opinion, but contrary to truth. The notice of 
Lesueur's death, extracted for the first time from the Register of 
Deatlis of the parish church of Saint-Louis in the isle of Notre- 
Dame, preserved amongst the archives of the Hotel de Ville at 
Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the Chartreux, but in 
the isle of Notre-Dame, where he dwelt, in the parish of St. 
Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne du 
Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also 
that Lesueur died before his wife, Genevieve Gousse, since the 
Register of Births of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the 
date 18th February 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child 
of Lesueur. Now, Genevieve Gousse" must have deceased almost 
immediately after her confinement, supposing her to have died 
before her husband's decease, which occurred on the 1st of the 
following May. If this were the case, we should have found a 
notice of her death in the Register of Deaths for the year 1655, as 



430 APPENDIX. 

we do for that of her husband. Such a notice, however, which 
could alone disprove the probability, and authenticate the vulgar 
opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst the archives of the 
Hotel de Ville, at least the author of the Nouvelles RechercJies 
has nowhere been able to meet with it. 

In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history 
remains untouched. He never was in Italy ; and according to 
the account of Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long re- 
mained in manuscript, he never desired to go there. He was 
poor, discreet, and pious, tenderly loved his wife, and lived in the 
closest union with his three brothers and brother-in-law, who were 
all pupils and fellow-labourers of his. It appears to be a refine- 
ment of criticism which denies the current belief of an acquaint- 
ance between Lesueur and Poussin. If no document authenticates 
it, at all events it is not contradicted by any, and appears to us 
to be highly probable. 

Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. 
It would certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, 
which he could have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin 
was staying at Paris from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult 
for them not to have met. After Vouet's death in 1641, Lesueur 
acquired more and more a peculiar style ; and in 1642, at the 
age of twenty-five, entirely unshackled, and with a taste ripe for 
the antique and Raphael, he must frequently have been at the 
Louvre, where Poussin resided. Thus it is natural to suppose 
that they frequently saw each other and became acquainted, 
and with their sympathies of character and talent, acquaintance 
must have resulted in esteem and love. If Poussin's letters 
do not mention Lesueur, we would remark that neither do 
they mention Champagne, whose connexion with Poussin is not 
disputed. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de Saint- 
Georges' account is far from convincing ; inasmuch as being in- 
tended to be read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only 



LESUEUR. 431 

contain a notice of the great artist's career, without those biogra- 
phical details in which his friendships would be mentioned. 
Lastly, it is impossible to deny Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, 
which it seems to us at least probable was as much due to his 
counsels as to his example. 

Page 215 : " But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. 
Paul." 

We have recently seen, at Hampton Court, the seven car- 
toons of Raphael, which should not be looked at, still less cri- 
ticised, but on bended knee. Behold Raphael arrived at the 
summit of his art, and in the last years of life ! And these were 
but drawings for tapestry ! These drawings alone would reward 
the journey to England, even were the figures from the friezes of 
the Parthenon not at the British Museum. One never tires of 
contemplating these grand performances even in the obscurity of 
that ill-lighted room. Nothing could be more noble, more mag- 
nificent, more imposing, more majestic. What draperies, what 
attitudes, what forms ! Notwithstanding the absence of colour, 
the effect is immense ; the mind is struck, at once charmed and 
transported ; but the soul, we can speak for ourselves, remains 
well-nigh insensible. We request any one to compare carefully 
the sixth cartoon, clearly one of the finest, representing the 
Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus, with the painting we have de- 
scribed of Lesueur's. One, immediately and at the first sight, 
transports you into the regions of the ideal ; the other is less 
striking at first, but stay, consider it well, study it in detail, then 
take in the whole : by degrees you are overcome by an ever-in- 
creasing emotion. Above all, examine in both the principal cha- 
racter, St. Paul. Here, you behold the fine long folds of a superb 
robe which at once envelops and sets off his height, whilst the 
figure is in shade, and the little you see of it has nothing striking. 
There he confronts you, inspired, terrible, majestic. Now say 
which side lays claim to moral effect. 



432 APPENDIX. 

Page 219: " The great works of Lesueur, Poussin, and so many 
others scattered over Europe." 

Of all the paintings of Lesueur which are in England, that 
which we regret most not having seen \s, Alexander and his Phy- 
sician, painted for M. de Nouveau, director-general of the Postes, 
which passed from the Hotel Nouveau to the Place Koyale in the 
Orleans Gallery, from thence into England, where it was bought 
by Lady Lucas at the great London sale in 1800. The sale 
catalogue, with the prices and names of the purchasers, will be 
found at the end of vol. i. of M. Waagen's excellent work (Euvres 
d'Art et Artistes en Angleterre, 2 vols., Berlin, 1837 and 1838. 

We were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to 
meet, in the valuable gallery of M. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient 
peer of France, and free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, with 
another Alexander and his physician Philip, in which the hand 
of Lesueur cannot be mistaken. The composition of the entire 
piece is perfect. The drawing is exquisite. The amplitude and 
nobleness of the draperies recall those of Kaphael. The form of 
Alexander fine and languid; the person of Philip the physician 
grave and imposing. The colouring, though not powerful, is 
finely blended in tone. Now, where is the true original, is it 
with M. Houdetot or in England 1 The painting sold in London 
in 1800 certainly came from the Orleans' gallery, which would 
seem most likely to have possessed the original. On the other 
hand, it is impossible M. Houdetot's picture is a copy. They 
must, therefore, both be equally the work of Lesueur, who has in 
this instance treated the same subject twice over, as he has 
likewise done the Preaching of St. Paul ; of which there is an- 
other, smaller than that at the Louvre, but equally admirable, at 
the Place Royale, belonging to M. Girou de Buzariengues, cor- 
responding member of the Academy of Sciences. 1 

1 This is the sketch which Felibien so justly praises, part v., p. 37 of 
the 1st edition, in 4to. 



LESUEUR. 433 

"We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, 
found by that eminent critic in the English collections : The 
Queen of Sheba before Solomon, the property of the Duke of De- 
vonshire, vol. i., p. 24:5. Christ at the foot of the Cross supported 
by his Family, belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 4G3, 
" the sentiment deep and truthful," remarks M. Waagen. The 
Magdalen pouring the ointment on the feet of Jesus, the property 
of Lord Exeter, vol. ii., p. 485, " a picture full of the purest sen- 
timent;" lastly, in the possession of M. Miles, & Death of Ger- 
manicus, "a rich and noble composition, completely in Poussin's 
style," remarks M. Waagen, vol. ii., p. 356. Let us add that this 
last work is not met with in any catalogue, ancient or modern. 
We ask ourselves whether this may not be a copy of the Germani- 
cus of Poussin attributed to Lesueur. 

The author of Musees d'Allemagne et de Russie (Paris 1844) 
mentions at Berlin a Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, 
opening upon a landscape, and pretends that this picture is as 
pathetic as the best Saint Brunos in the Museum at Paris. It is 
probably a sketch, like the one we have, or one of the wanting 
panels ; for as for the pictures themselves, there were never more 
than twenty- two at the Chartreux. and these are at the Louvre. 
Perhaps, however, it may be the picture which Lesueur made for 
M. Bernard de Roze, see Florent Lecomte, vol. iii., p. 98, which 
represented a Carthusian in a cell. At St. Petersburgh, the cata- 
logue of the Hermitage mentions seven pictures of Lesueur, one 
of which, The infant Moses exposed on the Nile, is admitted by the 
author cited to be authentic. Can this be one of two Moses 
which were painted by Lesueur for M. de Nouveau, as we learn 
from Guillet de Saint-Georges ? Unless M. Viardot is deceived, and 
mistakes a copy for an original, we must regret that a real Lesueur 
should have been suffered to stray to St. Petersburgh, with many 
of Poussin's most beautiful Claudes (see p. 474), Mignards, Se- 
bastian Bourdons, Gaspars, Stellas, and Valentins. 



434 APPENDIX. 

Some years ago, at the sale of Cardinal Fesch's gallery, we 
might have acquired one of Lesueur's finest pieces, executed for 
the church of Saint-Germain-rAuxerrois, which had got, by some 
chance, into the possession of Chancellor Pontchartrain, after- 
wards into that of the Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, 
Christ with Martha and Mary, formed at Saint- Germain-rAux- 
errois, a pendent to the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Will it be 
believed that the French Government lost the opportunity, and 
permitted this little chef-tiCceuvre to pass into the hands of the 
King of Bavaria? A good copy at Marseilles was thought, 
doubtless, sufficient, and the original was left to find its way to 
the gallery at Munich, and meet again the St. Louis on his knees 
at Mass, which the catalogue of that gallery attributes to Lesueur, 
on what ground we are not aware. In conclusion, we may men- 
tion that there is in the Museum at Brussels, a charming little 
Lesueur, The Saviour giving his Blessing, and in the Museums of 
Grenoble and Montpellier several fragments of the History of 
Tobias, painted for M. de Fieubet. 

Page 219 : " Those master-pieces of art that honour the nation 
depart without authorization from the national territory ! There 
has not been found a government which has undertaken at least 
to repurchase those that we have lost, to get back again the great 
works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in 
Europe, instead of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of 
Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish canvasses, in truth of an 
admirable colour, but without nobleness and moral expression." 

Shall we give a recent instance of the small value we appear to 
set on Poussin 1 We blush to think that in 1848 we should have 
permitted the noble collection of M. de Montcalm to pass into 
England. One picture escaped : it was put up to sale in Paris on 
the 5th of March, 1850. It was a charming Poussin, undoubtedly 
authentic, from the Orleans' gallery, and described at length in 
the catalogue of Dubois de Saint-Gelais. It represented the 



poussin. 435 

Birth of Bacchus, and by its variety of scenes and multitude of 
ideas, showed it belonged to Poussin's best period. We must do 
Normandy, rather the city of Kouen, the justice to say that it 
made an effort to acquire it, but it was unsupported by Govern- 
ment ; and this composition, wholly French, was sold at Paris for 
the sum of 17,000 francs, to a foreigner, Mr. Hope. 

Miserable contrast ! while five or six hundred thousand francs 
have been given for a Virgin by Murillo, which is now turning 
the heads of all who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely 
resisted. I admire the freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of 
colour ; but every other superior quality which one looks to find 
in such a subject is wanting, or at least escaped me. Ecstasy 
never transfigured that face, which is neither noble nor great. 
The lovely infant before me does not seem sensible of the profound 
mystery accomplished in her. What, then, can there be in this 
vaunted virgin which so catches the multitude ? She is sup- 
ported by beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of a charming colour, 
the effect of all which is doubtless highly pleasant. 

Page 220 : " We endeavour to console ourselves for having 
lost the Seven Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep 
from England and Germany so many productions of Poussin, now 
buried in foreign collections, etc." 

After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted 
with the Seven Sacraments save from the engravings of Pesne, 
we made a journey to London, to see with our own eyes, and 
judge for ourselves these famous pictures, with many others of our 
great countryman, now fallen into the possession of England, 
through our culpable indifference, and which have been brought 
under our notice by M. Waagen. 

In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, 
we had to examine four galleries : the National Gallery, answering 
to our Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of 
Westminster, and, at some miles from London, the collection at 



436 APPENDIX. 

Dulwich College, celebrated in England, though but little known 
on the continent. 

We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an insti- 
tution which might easily be introduced into France, to the de- 
cided advantage of art and taste. A society has been formed in 
England, called the British Institution for promoting the Fine 
Arts in the United Kingdom. Every year it has, in London, 
an exhibition of ancient paintings, to which individual galleries 
send their choice pieces, so that in a certain number of years all 
the most remarkable pictures in England pass under the public 
eye. But for this exhibition, what riches would remain buried in 
the mansions of the aristocracy or unknown cabinets of provincial 
amateurs ! The society, having at its head the greatest names of 
England, enjoys a certain authority, and all ranks respond eagerly 
to its appeal. 

We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed 
to the exhibition ; there were Her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes 
of Bedford, Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, 
the Earls of Derby and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, 
besides bankers, merchants, savants, and artists. The exhibition 
is public, but not free, as you must pay both for admission and the 
printed catalogue. The money thus acquired is appropriated to 
defray the expenses of the exhibition; whatever remains is em- 
ployed in the purchase of pictures, which are then presented to 
the National Gallery. 

At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which 
well sustained the name of that master. Apollo watching the 
herds of Admetus; a Sea-port, both belonging to the Earl of Lei- 
cester, and Psyche and Amor, the property of Mr. Perkins; a pre- 
tended Lesueur, the Death of the Virgin, from the Earl of Suffolk; 
seven Sebastian Bourdons, the Seven Works of Mercy, 1 lent by 

1 This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette, 
see the Abecedctrio, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p. 171. Itap- 



poussin. 437 

the Earl of Yarborough; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not 
one morceau of his illustrious brother-in-law's. 

We were more fortunate in the National Gallery. 

There, to begin, what admirable Claudes! We counted as 
many as ten, some of them of the highest value. We will confine 
ourselves to the recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. 
Ursula, a large landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of 
Sheba. 

1st, Tlie Embarkation of St. Ursula, which was painted for the 
Barberini, and adorned their palace at Rome until the year 1760, 
when an English amateur purchased it from the Princess Bar- 
berini, with other works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 
inches high, 4 feet 11 inches wide. 

2nd, The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches high, 6 feet 7 inches 
wide. Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting 
the arrival of Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their mar- 
riage. 

3rd, The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, going to visit Solo- 
mon, formed a pendent to the preceding figure, which it resembles 
in its dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing. M. 
Waagen declares it to be the most beautiful morceau of the kind 
be is acquainted with, and asserts that Lorrain has here attained 
perfection, vol. i., p. 211. This master-piece was executed by 
Claude for his protector, the Duke de Bouillon. It is signed 
" Claude GE. I. V., faict pour son Altesse le Due de Bouillon, 
anno 1648." Doubtless the great Duke de Bouillon, eldest brother 
of Turenne. This French work, destined, too, for France, she has 
now for ever lost, as well as the famous Book of Truth, Libro di 



pears to have been a favourite work of Bourdon, be having himself en- 
graved it, see de Piles, Ahrey'e de la Vie des Peintres, 2nd edition, p. 
494, and the Print re yraveur francais, of M. Robert Dumesnil, vol. i., 
p 131, etc. The copperplates of the Seven Works of Mercy are at the 
Louvre. 



438 APPENDIX. 

Veritct, in which Claude collected the drawings of all his paintings, 
drawings which may be themselves regarded as finished pictures. 
This invaluable treasure was, like the Embarkation of the Queen of 
Sheba, for a long time in the hands of a French broker, who would 
willingly have relinquished it to the Government, but failing to 
find purchasers in Paris in the last century, ultimately sold it for 
a mere nothing into Holland, whence it has passed into England. 1 
The author of the Musees oVAllemagne et de Russie, mentions that 
in the gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, amongst a large 
number of Claudes, whose authenticity he appears to admit* 
there are four rnorceaux, which he does not hesitate to declare 
equal to the most celebrated chefs-d'oeuvre of that master, in Paris 
or London, called the Morning, the Noon, the Evening, and the 
Night. They are from Malmaison. Thus the sale of the gallery 
of an empress has in our own time enriched Russia, as, twenty-five 
years before, the sale of the Orleans gallery enriched England. 

In the National Gallery, along with the serene and quiet land- 
scapes of Lorrain, are five of Gaspar's, depicting nature under an 
opposite aspect — rugged and wild localities, and tempests. One 
of the most remarkable represents Eneas and Dido seeking shelter 
in a grotto from the violence of a storm. The figures are from 
the pencil of Albano, and for a length of time remained in the 
palace Falconieri. Two other landscapes are from the palace 
Corsini, and two from the palace Colonna. 

But to return to our real subject, which is Poussin. There are 
eight paintings by his hand in the National Gallery, all worthy of 
mention. M. Waagen has merely spoken of them in general 
terms, but we shall proceed to give a description in detail. 

Of these eight paintings, only one, representing the plague of 
Ashdod, is taken from sacred history. This is described in the 

1 The Libro di Veritd, is now the property of the Duke of Devonshire. 
M. Le*on de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the Archives de 
VArt francais, torn, i., p. 435, et seq. 



poussin. 439 

printed catalogue as No. 165. The Israelites having been van- 
quished by the Philistines, the ark was taken by the victors and 
placed in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod. The idol falls before 
the ark, and the Philistines are smitten with the pestilence. This 
canvass is 4 feet 3 inches high, and 6 feet 8 inches wide. A sketch 
or copy of the Plague of the Philistines is in the Museum of the 
Louvre, and has been engraved by Picard. Poussin was, in fact, 
fond of repeating a subject; there are two sets of the Seven Sacra- 
ments, two Arcadias, 1 two or three Moses striking the Pock, &c. 
The science of painting is here employed to pourtray the scene in 
all its terrors, and display every horror of the pestilence, and it 
would seem that Poussin had here endeavoured to contend with 
Michael Angelo, even at the expense of beauty. It is said the 
commission for this work was given by Cardinal Barberini. It 
comes from the palace of Colonna. The subjects of the remaining 
seven pictures in the National Gallery are mythological, and may 
be nearly all referred to the early epoch of Poussin's career, when 
he paid tribute to the genius of the 16th century, and yielded to 
the influence of Marini. 

No. 39. The Education of Bacchus, a subject chosen by Pous- 
sin more than once. On a small canvass 2 feet 3 inches high, 
and 3 feet 1 inch wide. 

No. 40. Another small picture 1 feet 6 inches high, and 3 feet 
4 inches broad : Phocion washing his Feet at a Public Fountain, a 
touching emblem of the purity and simplicity of his life. To 
heighten this rustic scene, and impart its meaning, the painter 
shows us the trophies of the noble warrior hung on the trunk of 
a tree at a little distance. The whole composition is striking and 
full of animation. We believe that it has never been engraved. 
It forms a happy addition to the two other compositions conse- 

1 The first composition of Arcadia, truly precious could it have been 
placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in England, 
the prcperty of the Duke of Devonshire. 



440 APPENDIX. 

crated by Poussin to Phocion, and which have been so admirably 
engraved by Baudet, Phocion carried out of the City of Athens, and 
the Tomb of Phocion. 

No. 42. Here is one of the three bacchanals painted by Poussin 
for the Duke de Montmorency. The two others are said to be in 
the collection of Lord Ashburnham. This bacchanal is 4 feet 8 
inches high, and 3 feet 1 inch wide. In a warm landscape Bac- 
chus is sleeping surrounded by nymphs, satyrs, and centaurs, 
whilst Silenus appears under an arbour attended by sylvan 
figures. 

No. 62. Another bacchanal, which may be considered one of 
Poussin's masterpieces. According to M. Waagen, it belonged to 
the Colonna collection, but the catalogue, published by Authority, 
states that it was originally the property of the Comte deVaudreueili, 
that it afterwards came into the hands of M. de Calonne, whence 
it passed into England, and ultimately found its way into the 
hands of Mr. Hamlet, from whom it was purchased by Parliament, 
and placed in the National Gallery. It is 3 feet 8 inches high, 
and 4 feet 8 inches wide. Its subject is a dance of fauns and 
bacchantes, which is interrupted by a satyr, who attempts to take 
liberties with a nymph. Besides the main subject, there are 
numerous spirited and graceful episodes, particularly two infants 
endeavouring to catch in a cup the juice of a bunch of grapes 
supported in air, and pressed by a bacchante of slim and fine 
form. The composition is full of fire, energy, and spirit. There 
is not a single group, not a figure, which will not repay an at- 
tentive study. M. Waagen does not hesitate to pronounce it 
one of Poussin's finest. He admires the truth and variety of 
heads, the freshness of colour, and the transparent tone (die Fcir- 
hung von seltenster Frische, Helle und Klarheit in alien Theilen). 
It has been engraved by Huart, and accurately copied by Landon, 
under the title of Danse de Fauns et de Bacchantes. 

No. Go. Oephalu and Aurora. Aurora, captivated by the 



poussin. 441 

beauty of Cephalus, endeavours to separate him from his wife 
Procris. Being unsuccessful, in a fit of jealousy she gives to 
Cephalus the dart which causes the death of his adored spouse. 
3 feet 2 inches high, 4 feet 2 inches wide. 

No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet 
wide, representing Phineas and his Companions changed into 
Stones by looking on the Gorgon. Perseus, having rescued An- 
dromeda from the sea monster, obtains her hand from her father 
Cepheus, who celebrates their nuptials with a magnificent feast. 
Phineas, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed, rushes in upon 
the festivity at the head of a troop of armed men. A combat 
ensues, in which Perseus, being nearly overcome, opposes to his 
enemies the head of Medusa, by which they are instantly changed 
to stone. This composition is full of vigour, with brilliant colour- 
ing, although somewhat crude. It is nowhere mentioned, and we 
are not aware of its having been engraved. 

No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 
foot 8 inches wide : A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Love and 
Satyrs, engraved by Daulle, also in Landon's work. 

Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we 
come upon another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not 
the disciple of Marini but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of 
mythology giving way to the austerity and sublimity of Christian- 
ity. Such is the account of what we came to see; we looked for 
much, and found more than we expected. 

The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the 
Duke of Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle 
of the eighteenth century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the 
Marquis of Stafford, on the condition of his leaving it to his 
second son, Lord Francis Egerton, now Lord Ellesmere. The 
best part of this collection was engraved during the life of the 
Marquis of Stafford, by Otlley, under the title of the Stafford 
Gallery, in 4 vols, folio. 



44-2 APPENDIX. 

It occupies the first place in England amongst private collec- 
tions, on account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian 
and Dutch and French schools. A large number of paintings 
were added to it from the Orleans Gallery, and we could not re- 
press a feeling of regret to meet at Cleveland Square with so many 
masterpieces formerly belonging to France, and which have been 
engraved in the two celebrated works: 1. La Galerie du due 
d? Orleans au Palais-Royal, 2 volumes in folio; 2. Recueil d'es- 
tampes d'apres les plus beaux tableaux et dessins qui sont en 
France dans le cabinet du roi et celui de Monseigneur le due 
dHOrleans, 1729, 2 volumes in folio ; a most valuable collection 
known also under the name of the Cabinet of Crozat. This ad- 
mirable collection is deposited in a building worthy of it, in a 
veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300 paintings. The 
French school is here well represented. The Musical Party, 
from the Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the Galerie du Palais- 
Royal ; three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes, 
described by M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described 
in the catalogue as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. 
de Bourlemont, a gentleman of Lorraine; the former, Demosthenes 
by the Sea-side, offers a fine contrast between majestic ruins and 
nature eternally young and fresh; the second, Moses at the Burn- 
ing Busli, a third, No. 103, of the year 1657, was likewise painted 
for a Frenchman, M. de Lagarde, and represents the Metamor- 
phosis qfApuleius into a Shepherd; lastly, there is a fourth, No. 
97, the freshest idyll that ever was, a View of the Cascatelles of 
TivolL 

The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon 
fades before the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, 
marked in the catalogue Nos. 62-69, the Seven Sacraments, and 
Moses stinking the Rock with his Rod. 

It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which 
took possession of us whilst contemplating the Seven Sacraments. 



poussin. 443 

Whatever M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly no- 
thing theatrical about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is 
here animated and enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and 
the genius of the painter. The moral expression is of the most 
exalted character, and is left to be noticed less in the details than in 
the general composition. In fact, it is in composition that Poussin 
excels, and, in this respect, we do not think he has any superior, 
not even of the Florentine and Roman school. As each Sacra- 
ment is a vast scene in which the smallest details go to enhance 
the effect of the whole, so the Seven Sacraments form a harmo- 
nious entirety, a single work, representing the development of the 
Christian life by means of its most august ceremonies, in the same 
way as the twenty-two St. Brunos of Lesueur express the whole 
monastic life, the intention of the variety being to give a truer 
conception of its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say as much 
as this for the Stanze of the Vatican? Have they a common 
sentiment? Is the sentiment profound, and, indeed, Christian? 
No doubt Raphael elevates the soul, whatever is beautiful cannot 
fail to do that; but he touches only the surface, circum prwcordia 
ludit; he penetrates not deep ; moves not the inner fibres of our 
being: for why? he himself was not so moved. He snatches us 
from earth, and transports us into the serene atmosphere of eter- 
nal beauty; but the mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of 
the heart, magnanimity, heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this 
he does not express; and why was this? because he did not pos- 
sess it in himself, because it was not to be met with around him in 
the Italy of the 16th century, in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, 
and impious, given up to every vice and disorder, which Luther 
could not even catch a glimpse of without raging with horror, and 
meditating a revolution. From this corrupt basis, thinly hidden 
by a fictitious politeness, two great figures, Michael Angelo and 
Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But the noble widow of the 
Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company of the Fornarina ; 



444 APPENDIX. 

and what common ground could the chaste lover of the second 
Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the intrepid 
engineer who defended Florence, the melancholy author of the Last 
Judgment and of Lorenzo di Medici, have with such men as Peru- 
gino boldly professing atheism, at the same time that he painted, 
at the highest price possible, the most delicate Madonnas; and 
his worthy friend Aretino, atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing 
with the same hand his infamous sonnets and the life of the Holy 
Virgin; and Giulio Romano, who lent his pencil to the wildest 
debaucheries, and Marc' Antonio, who engraved them? Such is 
the world in which Raphael lived, and which early taught him to 
worship material beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the 
strongest, fine drawing, sweet contours, of light, of colour, but 
which always hides from him the highest beauty, that is, moral 
beauty. Poussin belongs to a very different world. Thanks to 
God, he had learned to know in France others besides artists 
without faith or morals, elegant amateurs, rich prelates, and com- 
pliant beauties. He had seen with his eyes heroes, saints, and 
statesmen. He must have met, at the court of Louis XIII., be- 
tween 1640 and 1642, the young Conde and the young Tu- 
renne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and Made- 
moiselle de Lafayette; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with 
Lesueur, with Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. 
Like the last, he is grave and masculine; he has the sentiment of 
the great, and strives to reach it. If, above everything, he is an 
artist, if his long career is an assiduous and indefatigable study of 
beauty, it is pre-eminently moral beauty that strikes him : and 
when he represents historic or Christian scenes, one feels he is 
there, like the author of the Cid, of Cinna, and of Polyeucte, in 
his natural element. He shows, assuredly, much spirit and grace 
in his mythologies, and like Corneille in several of his elegies and 
in the Declaration of Love to Psyche: but also like him, it is in the 
thoughtful and noble style that Poussin excels: it is on the moral 



poussin. 445 

ground that he has a place exalted and apart in the history of 
art. 

It is not our intention to describe the Seven Sacraments, which 
has been done by others more competent to the task than our- 
selves. We will only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speak- 
ing of the sacrament of the Ordination, could have employed more 
gravity and majesty than Poussin has done in the noble painting, 
so well preserved, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy 
of remark, in this as in the other paintings of Poussin's best 
period, how admirably the landscape accords with the historic 
portion. Whilst the foreground is occupied with the great scene 
in which Christ transmits his power to St. Peter before the assem- 
bled apostles, 1 in the distance, and above the heights, are descried 
edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, the Extreme Unction is 
the most pathetic; affects and attracts us most by its various 
qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace shed around the 
images of death; 2 but, unhappily, this striking composition has 

1 In the first set of the Seven Sacraments, executed for the Chevalier del 
Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Dnke of Rutland, and with 
which we are acquainted only through engravings, Christ is placed on the 
left hand; it is less masterly and imposing, and the centre has a vacant ap- 
pearance. In the second set, painted five or six years after the former for 
M. deChanteloup, Christ is placed in the centre: this new disposition changes 
the entire effect of the piece. Poussin never repeated himself in treating 
the same subject a second time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfec- 
tion. And the memorable answer which he once made to one who inquired 
of him by what means he had attained to so great perfection, "I never 
neglected anything," should be always present to the mind of every artist, 
painter, sculptor, poet, or composer. 

2 Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettres de Poussin, 
Paris, 1824), " I am working briskly at the Extreme Unction, which is indeed 
a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of representing the dying." 
He adds, with a vivacity which seems to indicate that he took a particular 
fancy to this painting, " I do not intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well- 
disposed, until I have put it in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain 
seventeen figures of men, women and children, young and old, one part of 
whom are drowned in tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will 



446 APPENDIX. 

almost totally disappeared under the black tint, which has little 
by little gained on the other colours, and obscured the whole 
painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving of 
Pesne, and the beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the 
Louvre. 1 

Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most 
inconsiderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity 
of one half of Poussin's labours. He was in the habit of covering 
his canvass with a preparation of red, which has been changed by 
the effect of time into black, and thus absorbed the other colours, 
destroying the effect of the etherial perspective. As every one 
knows, this does not occur with a white preparation, which, in- 
stead of destroying the colours, preserves them for a length of 
time in their original state. This last process Poussin appears to 
have adopted in the Moses striking the Rock with his Staff, incom- 
parably the finest of all the Strikings of the Rock which proceeded 
from his pencil. This masterpiece is well known, from the en- 
graving by Baudet, and has passed, with the Seven Sacraments, 
from the Orleans gallery into the collection at Bridgewater. 

not describe it to you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, 
it requires a gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet 
high; the painting will be about the size of your Manne, but of better pro- 
portion." Felibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise remarks 
(Enlrctiens, etc., part iv. p. 293), that the Extreme Unction was one of the 
paintings which pleased him most. We learn at length, from Poussin's 
letters, that he finished it and sent it into France in this same year, 1644. 
Felibien informs us that in 1646 he completed the Confirmation in 1647, the 
Baptism, the Penance, the Ordination and the Eucharist, and that he sent the 
last sacrament, that of Marriage, at the commencement of the year 1648. 
Bellori (le Vite de Pittori, etc., Rome, 1672) gives a full and detailed de- 
scription of the Extreme Unction; and, as he lived with Poussin, it seems 
credible that his explanations are for the most part those he had himself 
received from the great artist. 

l The drawing of the Extreme Unction is at the Louvre : the drawings of 
the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M. de la Salle, that of 
the seventh is the property of the well-known print seller, M. Defer. 



poussin. 447 

What unity is in this vast composition, and yet what variety in 
the action, the pose, the features of the figures ! It consists of 
twenty different pictures, and yet is but one; and not even one of 
the episodes could be taken away without considerable injury to 
the ensemble of the piece. At the same time, what fine colour- 
ing ! The impastation is both solid and light, and the colours 
are combined in the happiest manner. No doubt they might 
possess greater brilliancy ; but the severity of the subject agrees 
well with a moderate tone. It is important to remember this. 
In the first place, every subject demands its proper colour : in the 
second, grave subjects require a certain amount of colouring, 
which, however, must not be exceeded. Although the highest art 
does not consist in colouring, it would nevertheless be folly to re- 
gard it as of small importance : for, in that case, drawing would 
be everything, and colour might be altogether dispensed with. 
In attempting too far to please the eye, the risk is incurred of not 
going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On the other hand, 
want of colour, or what is perhaps still worse, a disagreeable, 
crude, and improper colouring, while it offends the eye, likewise 
impairs the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. 
Colour is to painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. 
There is equal defect whether in the case of too much or too little 
harmony, while one same harmony continued must be looked upon 
as a serious fault. Is Corneille happily inspired? His harmony, 
like his words, are true, beautiful, admirable in their variety. The 
tones differ with his different characters, but are always consistent 
with the conditions of harmony imposed by poesy. Is he negli- 
gent? hi3 style then becomes rude, unpolished, at times intoler- 
able. The harmony of Racine is slightly monotonous, his men 
talk like women, and his lyre has but one tone, that of a natural 
and refined elegance. There is but one man amongst us who 
speaks in every tone and in all languages, who has colours and 
accents for every subject, naive and sublime, vividly correct yet 



448 APPENDIX. 

unaffectedly simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of Madame, 
masculine and vigorous as Corneille or Tacitus when he comes to 
describe Retz or Cromwell, clear as the battle trumpet when his 
strain is Rocroy or Conde, suggestive of the equal and varied flow 
of a mighty river in the majestic harmony of his Discourse on 
Universal History, a History which, in the grandeur and extent 
of its composition, in its vanquished difficulties, its depth of art, 
where art even ceases to appear as such, in its perfect unity, and, 
at the same time, almost infinite variety of tone and style, is per- 
haps the most finished work which has ever come from the hand 
of man. 

To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side 
of the seven cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas 
representing the triumph of Caesar, and the fine portraits of Albert 
Durer and Holbein, French art makes so small a figure, there is a 
Poussin 1 of particularly fine colour, Satyrs finding a Nymph. 
The transparent and lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire 
picture. It is a study of design and colour, evidently of the 
period when Poussin, to perfect himself in every branch of his 
art, made copies from Titian. 

Time fails us to give the least idea of the rich gallery of the 
Marquess of Westminster, in Grosvenor Street. We refer for this 
to what M. Waagen has said, vol. ii., p. 113-130. The Flemish 
and Dutch schools preponderate in this gallery. One sees 
there in all their glory the three great masters of that school, 
Reubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt, accompanied by a num- 
erous suite of inferior masters, at present much in vogue, Hob- 
bcma, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others, who, to our idea, fade 
completely before some half-dozen by Claude of all sizes, of every 
variety of subject, and nearly all of the best time of the great 

' There is here likewise a charming Francis II., wholly from the hand 
of Clouet, and the portrait of Fe'nelon by Rigaud, which may be the original, 
or at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery at Vei'saillea. 



poussin. 449 

landscape-painter, between 1651 and 1GG1. Of these paintings, 
the greatest and most- important is perhaps the Sermon on the 
Mount. Poussin appears worthily by the side of Lorrain in the 
gallery at Grosvenor Street. M. Waagen admires particularly 
Calido changed into a Bear, and placed by Jupiter among the 
Constellations, and still more a Virgin ivith the infant Jesus sur- 
rounded by Angels. He extols in this morceau the surpassing 
clearness of colouring, the noble and melancholy sentiment of 
nature, together with a warm and powerful tone. M. Waagen 
places this painting amongst the masterpieces of the French 
painter (gehort zu clem vortrefflichsten was ich von ihm kennej. 
Whilst fully concurring in this judgment, we beg leave to point 
out in the same gallery two other canvasses of Poussin, two deli- 
cious pieces from the easel, first a touching episode in Moses strik- 
ing the Bock, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a mother who, 
heedless of herself, hastens to give her children drink, whilst their 
father bends in thanksgiving to God; the other, Children at play. 
Never did a more delightful scene come from the pencil of Albano. 
Two children look, laughing, at each other; another to the right 
holds a butterfly on his finger, a fourth endeavours to catch a 
butterfly which is flying from him, a fifth, stooping, takes fruit 
from a ba?ket. 

But we must quit the London galleries to betake ourselves to 
that which forms the ornament of the college situated in the 
charming village of Dulwich. 

Stanislas, king of Poland, charged a London amateur, M. Noel 
Desenfans, to form him a collection of pictures. The misfortunes 
of Stanislas, and the dismemberment of Poland left on M. Desen- 
fan's hands all he had collected; these he made a present of to a 
friend of his, M. Bourgeois, a painter, who still further enriched 
this fine collection, and bequeathed it, at his death, to Dulwich 
College, where it now is in a very commodious and well-lighted 
building. It conii.-ts of nearly 350 paintings. M. Waagen, who 

U 



450 APPENDIX. 

visited it, pronounces j udgment with some severity. The catalogue 
is ill-compiled, it is true, but in this it does not differ from nume- 
rous other catalogues. Mediocrity is frequently placed side by 
side with excellence, and copies given as originals j this is the case 
with more than one gallery. This one, however, has to us the 
merit of containing a considerable number of French paintings, 
to some of which even M. Waagen cannot refuse his admiration. 
We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain, 
two Bourguignons, three portraits by Rigaud, or after Rigaud, a 
Louis XIV., a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, 
two Lebruns, the Massacre of the Innocents, and Hor alius Codes 
defending the Bridge, in which M. Waagen discovers happy imita- 
tions of Poussin, three or four Gaspars and seven Claude Lor- 
rains, the beauty of most of which is a sufficient guarantee of 
their authenticity; together with a very fine Fete champetre by 
Watteau, and a View near Rome, by Joseph Vernet. Of Pous- 
sin, the catalogue points out eighteen, of which the following is 
a list: 

No. 115. Tlie Education of Bacchus; 142, a Landscape; 249, 
a Holy Family ; 253, the Apparition of the Angels to Abraham; 
260, a juindscape ; 269, the Destruction of Niobe ; 279, a Land- 
scape; 291, the Adoration of the Magi; 292, a Landscape ; 295, 
the Inspiration of the Poet; 300, the Education of Jupiter; 305, 
Hie Triumph of David; 310, the Flight into Egypt; 315, Renald 
and Armida; 316, Venus and Mercury; 325, Jupiter and 
Antiope; 336, the Assumption of the Virgin: 352, Children. 

Of these eighteen pictures, M. Waagen singles out five, which 
he thus characterises : 

The Assumption of the Virgin, No. 336. In a landscape of 
powerful poesy, the Virgin is carried off to heaven in clouds of 
gold: a small picture, of which the sentiment is noble and pure, 
the colouring strong and transparent fin der Farbe kraftiges und 



poussin. 451 

liaares Bild). Children, No. 352. Replete with loveliness and 
charm. The Triumph of David, No. 305. A rich picture, but 
theatrical. 

Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea, No. 300. A charming- 
composition, transparent tone. A Landscape, No. 260. A well- 
drawn landscape, breathing a profound sentiment of nature; but 
which has become rather blackened. 

We are unable to recognise in the Triumph of David the 
theatrical character which shocked M. Waagen. On the con- 
trary, we perceive a bold and almost wild expression, a great deal 
of passion finely subdued. 

A triumph must always contain some formality ; here, how- 
ever, there is the least possible, and that with which we are 
struck is its vigour and truth to nature. The giant's head stuck 
on the pike has the grandest effect: and we believe that the able 
German critic has, in this instance, likewise yielded to the preju- 
dices of his country, which, in its passion for what it styles reality, 
fancies it perceives the theatrical in whatever is noble. We ad- 
mit that at the close of the seventeenth century, under Louis 
XIV. and Lebrun, the noble was merged in the theatrical and 
academic; but under Louis XIII. and the Regency, in the time 
of Corneille and Poussin, the academic and theatrical style was 
wholly unknown. We entreat the sagacious critic not to forget 
this distinction between the divisions of the seventeenth century, 
nor to confound the master with his disciples, who, although they 
were still great, had slightly degenerated, and who were oppressed 
by the taste of the age of Louis XIV. 

But our gravest reproach against M. Waagen is, that he did 
not notice at Dulwich numerous morceaux of Poussin, which well 
merited his attention; amongst others, the Adoration of the Magi, 
far superior, for its colouring, to that in the Museum at Paris; 
and, above all, a picture which seems to us a masterpiece in the 



452 APPENDIX. 

difficult art of conveying a philosophic idea under the living form 
of a myth and an allegory. 

In this art, Poussin excelled : he is pre-eminently a philoso- 
phical artist, a thinker assisted by all the resources of the 
science of design. He has ever an idea which guides his 
hand, and which is his main object. Let us not tire to re- 
iterate this : it is moral beauty which he everywhere seeks, both 
in nature and humanity. As we have stated in relation to the 
sacrament of Ordination, the landscapes of Poussin are almost al- 
ways designed to set off and heighten human life, whilst Claude is 
essentially a landscape painter, with whom both history and human- 
ity are made subservient to nature. Subjects derived from Chris- 
tianity were exactly suited to Poussin, inasmuch as they afforded 
the sublimest types of that moral grandeur in which he delighted, 
although we do not see in him the exquisite piety of Lesueur and 
Champagne; and if Christian greatness speaks to his soul, it ap- 
pears to do so with no authority beyond that of Phocion, of 
Scipio, or of Germanicus. Sometimes neither sacred nor profane 
history suffices him : he invents, he imagines, he has recourse to 
moral and philosophic allegory. It is here, perhaps, that he is 
most original, and that his imagination displays itself in its greatest 
freedom and elevation. Arcadia is a lesson of high philosophy un- 
der the form of an idyll. The Testament of Eudamidas pourtrays 
the sublime confidence of friendship. Time Rescuing Truth from 
the assaults of Envy and Discord, the Ballet of Human Life, are 
celebrated models of this style. We have had the good fortune 
to meet at Dulwich with a work of Poussin's almost unknown, 
and of whose existence we had not even an idea, sparkling at the 
same time with the style we have been describing, and with the 
most eminent qualities of the chief of the French school. 

This work, entirely new to us, is a picture of very small size, 
marked No. 295, and described in the catalogue as The Inspira- 



poussin. 453 

tion of the Poet, a delightful subject, and treated in the most de- 
lightful manner. Fancy the freshest landscape, in the foreground 
a harmonious group of three, personages. The poet, on bended 
knee, carries to his lips the sacred cup which Apollo, the god of 
poesy, has presented to him. Whilst he quaffs, inspiration seizes 
him, his face is transfigured, and the sacred intoxication becomes 
apparent in the motion of his hands and his whole body. Beside 
Apollo, the Muse prepares to collect the songs of the poet. Above 
this group, a genius, frolicking in air, weaves a chaplet, whilst other 
genii scatter flowers. In the background, the clearest horizon. 
Grace, spirit, depth — this enchanting composition unites the whole. 
Added to this, the colour is well-grounded and of great brilliancy. 

It is very singular, that neither Bellori nor Felibien, who both 
lived on terms of intimacy with Poussin, and are still his best 
historians, say not a word of this work. It is not referred to in 
the catalogues of Florent Lecomte, of Gault de St. Germain, or 
of Castellan ; nor does M. Waagen himself, who, having been at 
Dulwich, must have seen it there, make the least mention of it. 
We are, therefore, ignorant in what year, on what occasion, and 
for whom this delicious little painting was executed: but the 
hand of Poussin is seen throughout, in the drawing, in the com- 
position, in the expression. Nothing theatrical or vulgar : truth 
combined with beauty. The whole scene conveys unmixed delight, 
and its impression is at once serene and profound. In our idea, 
The Insjiiration of the Poet may be ranked as almost equal with 
The Arcadia. 

Notwithstanding this, The Inspiration has never been engraved; 
at least we have not met with it in any of the rich collections of 
engravings from Poussin we have been enabled to consult, those 
of M. de Baudicour, of M. Gatteaux, member of the Academy of 
Fine Arts, and lastly, the cabinet of prints in the Bibliotheque 
■male. We hope that these few words may suggest to some 



43* APPENDIX. 



French engraver the idea of undertaking the very easy pilgrimage 
to Dulwich, and making known to the lovers of national art an 
ingenious and touching production of Poussin, strayed and lost, 
as it were, in a foreign collection. 



TIN 18. 



kdimbubgh: PUINTED BY AN DREW JACK, CLYDE street. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 798 417 2 



